Moderator's message: "Setting the scene: So we got Saylor, he comes in like a bull in a china shop and we freakin love him for it. Gets all that clout and a mass following by plebs who don't know any better about cults of personality in the Bitcoin space (they all get sacrificed in the end). Most Ego's in this space get greedy and lose the signal to pump different bullshit. Which is usually fine when they move on to their different projects and leave Bitcoin alone. But this time, it feels like they are gunning for something at a Bitcoin protocol level, and I'm pissed about it so I'll try my best here to call them out on what I feel is going on. Then we got elon, that poor tragic soul. He doesn't last long and has started spreading general misinformation these past few weeks on such a subversive level that you wonder if he's trolling or compromised. Next, marathon patent group and DMG. These fuckers get the bright idea to only include "OFAC approved" transactions inside the Bitcoin Blocks they mine. great, you're allowed to do that! Even if it means you lose mining revenue for doing so, and even if it means you still include OFAC violating transactions in your blocks. Hey, at least it's a good headline and gets the regulators hard. fucking idiots. For any mining pools or operators who are considering this slippery slope, know that it's a bad idea for you and your operation long term. You will not have community support for virtue signaling or appealing to unenforceable regulatory burden, or by lobbying to impose your bullshit standard on other miners. Once we start with "OFAC approved" blocks, it never ends. You give an inch, you give a mile. This is just the start to a slippery slope of censored Bitcoin transactions. So with those three elements (Saylor, Elon, Marathon) and a few other Bitcoin miners all in one room behind closed doors, they decide to form A cartel. ...maybe this was inevitable. But to you few who see what I see and feel what I feel, rage against the dark for you only burn once in this life. To Hut8 Mining, Argo Blockchain, Riot Blockchain, Marathon Digital Holdings, Hive Blockchain, Galaxy Digital, Core Scientific, BLOCKCAP, I ask, are you a part of a intelligence agency run mining cartel? It's a rhetorical question as you can't know the answer to this question. You should be operating under the assumption that such things are possible and proceed accordingly. cautiously. ie, not at all. For you independent miners who use any of these pools and can switch, do so now, ideally to https://braiins.com/stratum-v2 To you fucks who are fucking around, We see you."
Can't believe that this nonsense is moving bitcoin. If anyone still does not notice how moronic those cryptos are....
History always repeats itself, a recap of the 2017 closed door meeting of industry leaders: "There is a lot to the story, but the gist of it is that many big businesses operating in the Bitcoin space decided to attempt to use their position as 'industry heads' to strong-arm a hard fork that increased the block size. Many closed door meetings were held between business execs, miners, and even a few devs, and despite a complete lack of consensus, the execs pushed their agenda in a dangerous manner, literally under threat of burning it all down. The result was that the execs lost, and users that were running nodes were shown to be the ones in control (bottom up governance, not top down!). But it just went to show that closed-door, top-down governance of the bitcoin protocol is a bad idea that breaks some of the core assumptions that keep the network secure. The segwit2x mailing list is *quite* the read. I'll link to this message, wherein the biz execs admit defeat, and I'd recommend reading the next message in the list as well, just for the lolz. https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/pipermail/bitcoin-segwit2x/2017-November/000685.html"
Bitcoin is decentralized These billionaires can do whatever they want and I support their PR efforts for energy-usage reporting compliance The censorship on transactions with OFAC bullshit will not fly, though. I can see another Bitcoin fork(s) when that happens I'm willing to run multiple full nodes to support the censorship-resistant version I don't mind getting free coin(s) again, like in 2017 Taproot has privacy features which may combat censorship by malicious miners https://academy.binance.com/en/articles/what-is-taproot-and-how-it-will-benefit-bitcoin