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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.
A threat? I don't know about that. It is still one of the most accessible on-ramp. Not ideal for privacy for sure but you have options. All US exchanges are KYC so no much option there, but after the purchase how these coins get to your final destination wallets is another matter :-) Use your imagination and you can always take it on a boat ride :-) If you want to use P2P or foreign exchanges you will probably pay more but that's your choice.
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100 sats \ 0 replies \ @oomahq 5 May
Banger, except I can't even imagine any "right way to use an ETF".
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Just curious here - do you think KYC Bitcoin is acceptable ever?
What happens after the "government fights us?"
I do believe that KYC bitcoin will be attacked over and over - somewhere, sometime, by some body of government and/or some "bodies" of control(ers) yet to be realized - this is after all "A tale as old as time!"
I also believe that this "volatility" also dissipates over time (hundreds perhaps thousands of years) and moves toward to the edges of adoption if you will....
With that end in mind - I think the best steps we can take is to work towards making that future - the present...and in as much of an orderly and calm fashion as we can.
They may want to fight us at every turn but that doesn't mean we have to play in their pond....we do after all, now have our own :)
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There are guys who do consider two Bitcoins: KYC and non-KYC. I would love to know Satoshi’s opinion on this.
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Of course. Just like the official vs blue rates. It's good that KYC can become non so easily. Multisig is in conflict with the boating narrative.
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Next time I'll talk about the right way to use an ETF if you must.
Probably won't, but interested to read all the same.
I think about K Y C and how wrong it is. When you grew up in an analogue world, there were many examples of life, K Y C free. And it worked.
Telephones (i.e payphones, landline phones) this was non K Y C communication (not without limitations) but it was great. You might opt-in to put your name next to your phone number in a phone book, like businesses might do.
Then obviously in the payment world, it really the case of cash providing anonymity (security and privacy.) You went out, you needed a wallet. I guess there would be the point made that there were more victims of street theft. Although this doesn't seem to have changed (other than have gotten worse in many places where governments are failing) there was the fantastic feeling that you were essentially free. You could go anywhere, and nobody knew where you were, unless you told someone, at your discretion.
So here we are. I don't see this as a direct attack on Bitcoin, though without doubt, within the crosshairs. The entire, 'blue checking' (real-name identification) limitations on the use of cash, in wallets, real or digital is totalitarianism.
I don't mind if anyone wishes to opt into such a system. The freedom to make choices is a principle that great nations were founded upon. Just personally, as I see it, it's not making the world any safer (in actuality, more insecure, more paranoid, less trusting.) The right to privacy is your personal inalienable right.
[Sorry tangential rant off]
If self-custody decreases and KYC grows it could become hard to sell the bad fork.
Bad forks are like any sub-standard item. It is a hard sell when there is a market and flight to quality.
They may confiscate your freedom coins and prosecute you! Bitcoin could fade into irrelevance for decades.
Without deliberating the possibility of an actual Disk-esque future where we have mind reading and pre-crime, as technological progress seems lagging considering lifespans of recently manufactured vehicle, or quality of food items versus yesterday, you cannot prosecute something that is 1. Not really there. Electrons/information is not an actual possession. 2. Something that when many people acquired, was deemed worthless and irrelevant by authorities (i.e governments collectively, politicians individually and economists generally.) As a bad analogy, it's like stepping in some animal excrement in the street and being prosecuted for that. I acquired that excrement on the street. Was it my animal it came from? Was it in my own street I stepped on it? The fact that if you took a forensic analysis of my shoe a few years down the line, or 15 years it is possible that there may be traces there on my shoe of somewhere else. It's really not my fault that it was dismissed as worthless (and debatably is) whilst now simultaneously being made into a structured investment by government-regulated entities.
What is this "self-sending chain trail"?
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It's pretend transactions as if you were buying stuff or sending small gifts. The coins will need to keep moving but as onchain becomes more expensive this burden goes away.
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