2017 was the last time we had a serious forking situation in Bitcoin. With bcash the big questions were how would the fork be valued and would it be attacked?
Thankfully the economic majority saw through the fuckery and voted with their feet. There was little to stop them as many exchanges operated under the radar and without Know Your Customer policies. As a bonus, whether by duty or greed bitcoiners got paid for defending the chain.
One key here was custody. Your own keys mean if bitcoin works at all you can send to the marketplace. If bcashers hadn't made a functional wallet sellers had plenty motivation to make one.
Another is lack of KYC. Say world governments tracked down KYCd bitcoin buyers and prosecuted them for selling the bcash. If you think that would've been bad you should know it's where we're headed today.
Imagine a year from now. World governments are in full "fight you" mode. They start turning the screws on compliant miners, ETFs, and exchanges to adopt a "surveillance and censorship" hard fork.
Or in another scenario per Matt Corallo miners have centralized even further and we decide it's time to change up the proof of work algorithm OR looking further out we need a hard fork because of the timestamp.
If self-custody decreases and KYC grows it could become hard to sell the bad fork. They may confiscate your freedom coins and prosecute you! Bitcoin could fade into irrelevance for decades.
Surprise! ETFs are interestingly bad as well. There's a layer called the sponsor who actually holds coins and shields the ETF from any sort of say on forks. Retail ETF investors cannot sell the bad fork.
The unsurprising plan: Self-custody and avoid KYC.
Consider this another Not Your Keys warning. Self-custody may seem scary but it's not that hard. The tools are good and relatively cheap. Figure it out!
If you do KYC, then after withdrawal you can create a self-sending chain trail (preferably at a slight loss ~ always pay your taxes folks) to provide plausible deniability, run the coins over lightning to another wallet, get collaborative with your transactions, or if you must, go boating.
Next time I'll talk about the right way to use an ETF if you must.