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And I don't mean short selling

The attack starts with Fungibility

Remember - Blackrock BTC > Terrorist (non blackrock affiliated) BTC
-> We're a listed company - we need to clearly demonstrate the cleanliness of our BTC assets

It ends here

  • BlackRock custodies 2 million BTC on behalf of corporate clients around the world
  • 6 million BTC is held by large corporate clients
Following the upgrade (hardfork), our BTC ticker represents the industry-standard, environmentally friendly, KYC-safe BlackrockTCoin. Withdrawals of BiTerroristCoin will not be supported.
What can you do?
  1. Embrace it, custody your coins, and enjoy the eyewatering valuations of BlackRockTCoin
  2. Fight KYC BTC tooth and nail
Be conscious that #2 has little effect. You can't do shit.
It doesn't mean you shouldn't try, though...
Not realistic or possible. Fun to think about though.
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indeed, it's a thought experiment :-)
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I don't think they will do a hard fork.
But let's assume they will: I don't think that they will have the majority of nodes or miners on their side. Supporting a BlackRock hard fork would make bitcoin obsolete if BlackRock is in control of the hard fork. So it goes against the interest of all existing bitcoin users with their nodes, against all miners and now, in 2023/2024, even against the interest of all bitcoin companies. Remember, in 2017, it was mainly plebs defending against a hard fork. Now, there are even companies on our side.
But let's assume their fork wins: What now? They just made their asset essentially useless if they are the ones in control of it. If their intent is to kill bitcoin. Fine. They won. But they lost all their potential upside by bringing bitcoin to the masses.
So imho, I don't think BlackRock will risk a hard fork.
Also, I think only companies who don't know better will use their ETF. There are a lot of them out there probably but when they are ready, they can take custody of their bitcoins.
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Appreciate the counter argument. Let's acknowledge that BlackRock has wider interests that could benefit from an "uneconomic" re-definition of Bitcoin (as we know it), and that a significant proportion of global wealth custodians have relationship with BlackRock
And by BlackRock, I really mean, the families that control the trusts that own the myriad of companies that own BlackRock (and ultimately, the other 6 million BTC, the cloud server companies, the power grids, the phone companies, ISPs, and governments).
I also don't really mean BlackRock. I also mean all the BlackRock-type companies that these trusts / banking dynasties indirectly control.
Let's also remember that ALL existing bitcoin users, hodlers, node runners, miners, and bitcoin companies BENEFIT from the "legitimisation" of BTC, at least in terms of fiat price.
We don't even need the hard fork if the fungibility attack wins, and that could be a multi-decade affair.
I do believe this will be the last fight (fungibility, or kyc vs non-kyc) before the hard fork attempt, and then, hyperbitcoinisation. The big question, is which BTC will go hyperbolic. We all want Bitcoin to be free. We are all responsible for making it so.
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Regarding fungibility attack I think it’s a valid concern, however keep in mind that they will be limited to geographical zones and it's laws (USA & friends) in this case.
There is the possibility to move to another sovereign nation where there is no concept of “tainted" sats in it's law. This was not the case historically with gold or fiat for important amounts.
Blackrock trillions of paper money is not that important as it seems, they at most can become a private club holding 1 millon BTC.
The big game will be a global one, where countries see the geopolitical importance of Bitcoin and compete to mine and accumulate reserves of it. I suspect this is already happening at some scale since mining pools are very well balanced between USA vs Rusia/China and hashrate keeps going up.
So to effectively kill bitcoin you will have to form a "world government” and censore the tx's controlling the whole network. Even in this dystopian scenario alternative out-of-system markets will emerge as they always have.
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💯. This truly is frightening, particularly with Larry Fink being praised as "changing his mind on bitcoin." Bitcoin is just another plaything for that rent seeking pile of shit. He's Hilary 's boy. Remember what she did to Gaddafi when he wanted to put Libya on the gold standard?
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Replace BlackRock ETF with KYC'd corn and it's easier to reason about but there is no end. This situation is going to evolve forever and we'll make the best of it. Stay humble, stack sats. Never KYC from now on. Enjoy as much quality time as you can while you're here.
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BREAKING NEWS: BLACKROCK GIVES A 6 MILLION BTC PUMP GIFT TO ALL HODLERS, I REPEAT, BLACKROCK HAS VOLUNTARILY BURNED BILLIONS OF DOLLARS TO REINTRODUCE COUNTERPARTY RISK.
They can go fork themselves.
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They won't hard fork it- hard forks have been attempted and failed (measuring by hashrate), I think they want to make money on fees and also know that the USA is incentivized to hold BTC for strategic geopolitical reasons.
As for the tagging holders as terrorists they could try, the game theory in play here is that with your corn you can move to more favorable countries (long before it gets nasty).
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But can the idea of distinguishing between tainted and clean coins even work in the long run? Coins go through LN, CEXes and whatnot. Eventually most UTXOs will have a history of coinjoins behind them.
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Globally it won't.
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this would be great
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This attack vector is dead after the 2017 failed attempted takeover. If you're not familiar with the subject there's a great book about it called the Blocksize War by Jonathan Bier, which you can grab for free as a kindle or audio book right now. https://www.amazon.com/Blocksize-War-Control-Bitcoins-Protocol/dp/B096CLR1SS
But even before we get to talking about forks and fungibility, don't forget that Blackrock and friends are at a major, major disadvantage here in Jul 2023. THEY DON'T HAVE ANY COINS YET.
For them to acquire enough coins to theoretically do what you're worried about, they have to drive the price of bitcoin up so high that the bitcoin community (today's hodlers) become rich enough to control laws & commerce on this piddly little rock they call earth. We'll be the power players before long if they try that, and then we'll simply tell them, "no."
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Exactly, that's what I've been saying. If they buy a lot of BTC they will gain more power over normies, but they will give even more power to us bitcoiners.
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What difference does it make whether they fork it today or in five years, or ten years?
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