Author: phm 2015-09-19 21:53:21
Published on: 2015-09-19T21:53:21+00:00
The decentralization of Bitcoin is a hot topic among the crypto community. Mike Hearn, a renowned Bitcoin developer, believes that governments can shut down Bitcoin at any point regardless of its level of decentralisation. He argues that governments find it easy to ban things that threaten their authority, least of all their authority to control money. Thus, they can ban even the most popular items. Hearn suggests that a mining network that anyone can contribute to would enable Bitcoin to stay alive in spite of this. Hearn also talks about growth and how it can be dangerous because stateless money will be inherently opposed by the state. He further states that there's a difference between natural growth and the kind of growth that's being proposed by bank-backed start-ups and pro-censorship entities. He believes that computers are just amazingly fast, and we don't have to choose between decentralisation and growth.Hearn adds that a ban on Bitcoin would lead to a rise in p2p markets. Governments can easily spend enough money to do a 51% attack, especially if they can compel chip fabs to cooperate for free. Also, any government can end Bitcoin usage in its territory by jailing anyone who advertises acceptance/trading of bitcoins, or prices in BTC. Because merchants must advertise to alert customers that trades in BTC are possible, this is an attack that is unsolvable. If ordinary people can find such merchants, so can government agents.
Updated on: 2023-06-10T22:36:29.051202+00:00