There seems to be a little bit of confusion about the nature of Bitcoin. Some of this comes from people saying that we should be targeting the miners. This process is not correct, and I'll explain why.

In creating a system, only a few individuals or organisations have any involvement in the issue of a coin or the creation of the database. This is not distributed as people say, it can be a group of people and developers, but it still only that group.

When I created Bitcoin, I was the sole individual, which went into my companies and trusts. Being that I have now tasked the stewardship of the protocol to the Bitcoin association, they are responsible for all changes to the protocol.

The development team at nChain are contracted to the Bitcoin Association. Consequently, the developers do not hold liability for any action and do not need to act. The Bitcoin association needs to retain responsibility in this case.

Next, miners don't set the rules. Miners enforce the rules. This is a significant distinction that I've been trying to get people to follow. The police enforce rules; you don't want police setting rules.

Miners vote on the acceptance of valid rules; they don't decide on the rules. Miners act under a unilateral contract. A unilateral contract can be breached. Every block is offered as a unilateral contract that any party can seek to be paid on. A miner is paid not for setting the rules but for enforcing them. The whitepaper uses the word enforced very specifically. Any needed rules and incentives can be enforced, and this means that the miners are required to follow the rules that the Bitcoin association sets.

As the steward of my protocol, changes that are within the protocol may be implemented. The alert key allowed Bitcoin to be frozen. OP_CODESEPARATOR would have allowed multiple methods for this to be enacted in the first version of Bitcoin. One of the reasons Mike Hearn took this out of Bitcoin and changed other parts of the code was that people thought this was a problem. It isn't a problem. Moreover, Bitcoin is not this decentralised system that is designed to bypass the law.

So, this is the breakdown:

1- The creator and issuer is me.
2- I have assigned stewardship of the protocol to the Bitcoin association.
3- The Bitcoin association distributes Bitcoin to the miners under contract for the enforcement of rules.
4- The miners are contracted to follow the rules of the system.
5- Developers work for the association under contract or otherwise.

There is nothing new here, there is nothing cypherpunk about bitcoin, and that it is not about the decentralisation of political power.

CSW
Feb 4, 2021
https://metanet-icu.slack.com/archives/C5131HKFX/p1612439877287600?thread_ts=1612439877.287600&cid=C5131HKFX

There is a simple question.

In 12 months to 18 months from now, there will no longer be any mainstream doubts as to my identity and I will fully own my creation. It will be recognised by courts and government and more importantly within the next 12 months I will of patented every aspect of bitcoin that people haven't understood. Not just the things you can build on top of it but SPV, addressing, scaling techniques et cetera.

Of course, this then places nChain in the leadership role. IBM, Amazon, or the large players will need to come to us. There's a simple reason, as one known method of creating a scalable distributed micropayments and tokenisation system that acts within the law to ensure continuation. It's the one I created.

So, the question is who buckles first. Will they act like men and show a willingness to admit their wrongs or will they try and bury it and leave me to bury them...

CSW
Oct 28, 2019
https://metanet-icu.slack.com/archives/C5131HKFX/p1572252439025500?thread_ts=1572252439.025500&cid=C5131HKFX

_To solve this, we proposed a peer-to-peer network using proof-of-work to record a public history of transactions that quickly becomes computationally impractical for an attacker to change if honest nodes control a majority of CPU power._


You will note that I am very specific in the Whitepaper. In the sentence above,

I have stated that a public history of transactions is created that is computationally impractical for an attacker to change. This is an important aspect that people overlook. I have not stated that bitcoin cannot be changed. If the honest nodes are acting to enforce the system, they can always seek to make the necessary alterations that they are required to do. Miners acting within the law can change the system. Those changes will be recorded. This leaves an audit trail available for all people to inspect and act on if necessary.

It is not impractical for the honest nodes to seek to change the public history while leaving a record of the change. Honest nodes will act to stop people who have been found to be money launderers, drug dealers, dealers and illicit material including stolen art or property or child porn.

When you read that comment in the conclusion to the Whitepaper what you need to consider is the nature of both the statement and its alternative. I have clearly stated that it is computationally impractical for an attacker to seek to change the bitcoin network. To do this they will leave evidence and come under the law.

What is missed in this statement is that I have not said at any point that it is impractical for an honest node working in conjunction with the other nodes to make a change to the bitcoin blockchain or code. By nature, miners are able to vote on the implementation of changes. If they seek to vote to act against the law they will face the consequences the law and this will include confiscation and civil loss.

Bitcoin is not a cryptographic solution, it is not the desired anti-government thing that was wished for by cyberpunks, it is the product of my mind and I believe in law.

CSW
Sep 26, 2019
https://metanet-icu.slack.com/archives/C5131HKFX/p1569516609039600?thread_ts=1569516387.039500&cid=C5131HKFX

Something people have not grasped. The word proof refers to evidence. If we take the OED we will see the definition:

Evidence or argument establishing a fact or the truth of a statement.
‘you will be asked to give proof of your identity’

This differs from the concept of proof in mathematics. Bitcoin is not mathematically or cryptographically founded. You will also note that the paper does not say ownership is granted through keys but that digital signatures and the framework "which provides strong control of ownership".

This is an important distinction that few people understand. Control of ownership is not the same as possession nor of clear ownership of property. Nodes or miners enforce rules and as such should not be involved with the regulation of disputes involving property. Nodes can enforce changes, but to do so it would require that ownership of property must be absolutely clear. Where ownership is in real dispute, nodes should not be involved until the ownership has been established in civil or criminal courts.

The paper talks about proof in the sense of law. It is not a complete and definitive statement of truth, no proof or evidence ever can be. What people do not understand is where it states that there is an ongoing chain of hash based proof of work forming a record that cannot be changed without redoing that work that this does not preclude change. In an honest system, an alteration to the blockchain that is publicly appended does not alter the ongoing proof of work. Altering that so that the changes are secret is the nature of an attack. Honest nodes can enforce changes as required by simply adding a record to update the database, and bitcoin is simply a ledger or database.

CSW
Oct 14, 2019
https://metanet-icu.slack.com/archives/C5131HKFX/p1571073993158000

• Fully decentralised: anyone can download the blockchain software on their computer to set up a node that connects with other nodes in the network over the internet. Each node in the network is a "peer" meaning there is no one node or entity in charge of running the network. The network is run by the blockchain software or protocol.

The unfortunate aspect of the facts of the matter when it comes to court is that there is no such thing as a fully decentralised system. The legal definition is provided above. For a system to be fully decentralised, every single node has to be able to be part of the consensus mechanism. In bitcoin, the consensus mechanism is creating blocks. As the consensus mechanism is the creation of blocks only a limited number of nodes can exist. SPV is not a node under the definition. So, no proof of work system can be fully decentralised. The system is not run by the software, that would require that there are no development teams.

So, the problem when this goes to court is that the facts can be argued. And the fact is no blockchain is fully decentralised. More importantly, no proof of work block chain can be fully decentralised.

CSW
Sep 9, 2020
https://metanet-icu.slack.com/archives/C5131HKFX/p1599645881409300

https://www.tgoop.com/CSW_Slack/1946

The Alert key allowed the freezing on UTXOs in 2010

The capability can be applied. What you are not being told is that it doesn't require any hard forks or soft forks or anything for that matter.

The ability to freeze bitcoin has nothing at all to do with the economic actor's core keep talking about. The code is even in Luke Dashers version of core.

Doesn't matter how you apply it, only nodes a.k.a. miners matter here and those who don't follow it become legal targets

so, the irony is that this applies to every single Blockchain that can ever be developed and that there is no way to remove this capability

the entire attack has been one of social media and lies. It does not matter that you have UASF or don't agree or kick up a stink or say that the exchanges don't agree or that local user wallets don't agree or the core full wallet crap thing doesn't agree

you cannot have a Blockchain without this capability

I have stated before that ledgers are updated by appending records.

There is nothing in bitcoin that does not allow this. As a micro payment system it becomes too expensive. The cost of recovering stolen money will start with lawyers fees and anything less than US$50,000 will be impossible to justify

However, when you're talking about larger amounts and UTXO's it becomes simple to also alert individuals to this action. The nature of the Blockchain is such that a message can be nearly instantly broadcast to the entire network and all users would be able to download this next time they check a transaction.

One of the requirements for money to be fungible in law is an exchange of goods and services for consideration without knowledge.

And without knowledge is key. If you have a reasonable expectation of knowledge such as by using alert key system to send a message to the entire network or even that you send a message to the network that is not signed but links to a page which shows the information, this is sufficient for a court

After that, even if the UTXO can be moved it will then be tainted and no longer fungible as every recipient will know that this could be seized at some time

The necessity is to keep records. Those who have been hiding and not paying taxes will never be able to do this. Those who have filed records and receipts with the tax office in their jurisdiction and paid any capital gains that are due to the entity being recorded or any income tax or anything else required under law will be fine

My problem was going to the tax office and telling them how it would make the tax department more streamlined and that they would need less overhead with staff

At times I forget that people like to protect their obsolete useless government departments

CSW
Jan 20, 2021
https://metanet-icu.slack.com/archives/C5131HKFX/p1611160499359500?thread_ts=1611160499.359500&cid=C5131HKFX

https://www.tgoop.com/CSW_Slack/1966

1/2
Logic is directly associated with analysing truth rationally and coming to a valid answer. Bitcoin is a system based on a predicate. A predicate is a means of constructing a valid proof, but to do so requires that each of the inputs also happen to be defined in a way that allows you to construct a proof.

When it comes to bitcoin, it is essential in analysing the system to determine all of the factors behind it.

Bitcoin is not encrypted.

This is an important aspect to note in that encrypted files mean that without a key there is no possibility of recovering the unencrypted information. If you lose the key to an encrypted file, if that key is of adequate length such as 256 bits, the chances of recovery are exceedingly slim and you should give up before beginning.

This point is relevant because had bitcoin been a cryptocurrency that was based on encrypted information, the recovery of data without a key would not be only infeasible but close to impossible. It would not matter if there was a court order. If the court orders information to be decrypted without a key, that leaves an impossible scenario that cannot be met.

The purpose of a system such as lightning is to create a system that does not maintain records. You add a trusted third-party in the form of watchtowers to monitor the transactions that act commercially while illegally deleting financial information.

You see, when you define the terms in a way that a judge understands it becomes much simpler.

So, the defence against changing bitcoin would be that it’s a distributed system and its encrypted. However, anybody who is knowledgeable who runs such a defence would be committing perjury. Perjury is a serious crime. Bearing false testimony and false witness in court as a developer would have to do in order to state that bitcoin is encrypted would lead to a prison sentence if it was demonstrated that they were not being honest.

Luckily, it is very simple to demonstrate that bitcoin is not encrypted by simply providing access to a block Explorer and demonstrating that there are no keys involved at any point. Further, a forensic analysis would demonstrate how all the information within the Blockchain can be extracted using any text and hex viewing tool.

Perjury is an indictable offence in the UK.

https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/Geo5/1-2/6

The enactment and commission of such a lie in stating that bitcoin is encrypted by a person who is knowledgeable outside of court and on a sworn testimony is known as a false statement under oath outside of a judicial setting leads to a prison sentence of up to 7 years, it is an indictable offence.

However, where the testimony is delivered in a judicial scenario under oath, this is known as perverting the course of justice.

I would definitely not recommend that any developer stated that bitcoin was encrypted and hence outside the reach of judicial review.

In the UK, the indictable offence of perverting the course of justice is considered incredibly seriously.

When the scenario overlaps and perverting the course of justice and perjury link such that a witness or expert witness in legal proceedings knowingly makes a false statement that is designed to affect the outcome of the case, the sentencing guidelines allow for the discretion of the judge with seven years penal sentencing and other criminal provisions.

The same would apply would a developer state that the GitHub repository is a community management project that is not controlled by a small number of developers. Developers using these tools know very well that a limited number of individuals control access to them and control access to loading the new software.

CSW
Feb 27, 2021
https://metanet-icu.slack.com/archives/C5131HKFX/p1614448358445100?thread_ts=1614448358.445100&cid=C5131HKFX
1/2
https://www.tgoop.com/CSW_Slack/2033

2/2
The logical conclusion in all of this is to very simply not attempt to prevent justice because in the coming cases there will be no way that all the attempted provisions of justice will not be brought to light. We will be ensuring that forensic testimony from respected individuals demonstrates the nature of what I’ve been explaining incredibly clearly. Moreover, the simple fact that we can implement controls of this nature overrides any argument saying that you can’t.

Miners are not issuing but rather act under a unilateral contract. You cannot enforce the rules against a miner unless they are acting in breach of contract. To be in breach of contract, they have to violate the conditions set by the fiduciary managing the network which in this case happens to be the development group.

If miners do not wish to follow the rules, they are not bound because it is a unilateral contract. They have the option to simply stop mining.

Any exchange that decided to list such a fork would also be in contempt of court and subject to freezing orders that would cut them off from all banking, limit them from using AWS, Google, cloud services, DNS, Internet protocol routing…

You get the gist

You see, people seem to think that they can simply avoid all of this but there are interesting avenues that come with contempt of court even globally. Not only is DNS available as an option to take against a rogue miner or exchange, but additionally filters could be imposed in BGP routing tables.

Effectively, the node or exchange seeking to breach court orders would be completely shut off from the Internet. Those who have been involved in Internet gambling understand just how effectively this can work. It costs money to do but then, I have considered all of that in my actions.

So the simple answer is that miners enforce rules, but they don't create them. The requirement to implement those rules would come to a developer group following a court order.

CSW
Feb 27, 2021
https://metanet-icu.slack.com/archives/C5131HKFX/p1614448358445100?thread_ts=1614448358.445100&cid=C5131HKFX
2/2
https://www.tgoop.com/CSW_Slack/2035

The same applies to myself. I am in court making claims under oath. Although the media likes to spin this differently, there are consequences to lying in court. There is a difference between making claims and social media and before a judge.

I understand all that very well. I may not be a likeable character, my Asperger’s does not endear me to many people who I have not dealt with before and I can be difficult, but this is a different matter to Lying. As people are going to find out very shortly. One thing many people do not understand is that Asperger’s is a condition linked to not being able to imagine situations that are outside truth. There are benefits to this, I am more capable in logic than many people.

The simple answer to Blockchain is to bring in individuals involved with accounting who have worked on paper records. Before a judge you simply ask whether an error can be corrected. You extend this to asking whether that means rolling back records and reversing entries. In all of this you will find that no accountant with any valid qualifications would ever consider rolling back entries or changing the books. Accounting records and ledges are immutable. All the updates remain immutable.

he never signed the contract, it was Rob that missed that point so he came in with a concept of bitcoin and a cyberpunk idea to fit into his mostly already written book

He wanted to create a cyberpunk cyberpunk story of hidden individuals and he ignored the complete truth of it all

He made it out as if I work alone and don't have corporate structures around me. You see, a corporate structure did not fit into his story of individualistic cyberpunks going out there and creating the new world in the garage against banks and government

Except, Everything I do is structured under corporate entities with audit and hierarchical structures around the individuals in my companies

it is nothing like a cyberpunk story

All about will fall apart in the story will be completely changed in a few months when all of this goes before a jury in court in the US and people start to learn that all of these stories that there listening to a complete fabrications that have no relevance to reality

one of the characters in that book doesn't exist

many parts of Satoshi story were already written before he ever met me

think about it for a moment, how can you have non-fiction about a made up character. Yet, he claims that is the case

bitcoin does not remove middlemen or trusted third parties, it lowers the value that they are needed online. It makes a digital form of cash.

This is the irony that people don't get. Bitcoin is only a means of getting rid of trusted third parties up to about $1000

Identity is required for large transactions and even transactions of $1000 or more and identity cannot be decentralised or distributed or given away or transacted or owned.

CSW
Feb 27, 2021
https://metanet-icu.slack.com/archives/C5131HKFX/p1614449471448600?thread_ts=1614449471.448600&cid=C5131HKFX

https://www.tgoop.com/CSW_Slack/2036

An important thing that people don't understand is that tokens will always require a legal aspect to be functional.

If you tokenised goods then the goods do not become digital

More importantly, how do you protect digital rights even if you're talking about digitising these because nothing on the Blockchain is encrypted and if you're selling rights to access something, you're also selling rights to decrypt

So even if you are talking about a digital asset nothing stops someone from copying that and recreating it outside of the law

If you have tokenised video the truth of the matter is it is only law and courts that stop individuals from making copies of that and from broadcasting it themselves even for money

Let's take an example - you make a new video from your band's music and you sell it using tokens

Apple for instance has their own distribution platform, they buy a single copy of that video and now have access to decrypt it

Rather than paying you, they reissue their own token and sell your video

It is only due to the fact that we can legally link ownership to individuals and take action that allows people to stop Apple from rebranding and selling that video that you have created and allowing your group to make money and not be beholden to a large company

Bitcoin does not solve these issues using technology, it provides evidence that allows a legal solution

If you start to think about it, this concept that bitcoin or derivatives are encrypted has made a false concept that allows individuals to promote a conncept that property rights don't exist

By being able to fork an asset anybody can just take over the rights of another

This is especially easily done on digital assets.

You require an ability to easily prove property rights and this requires courts and law

All of this posturing is logically flawed.

Individual sit there telling you how they want to protect your property rights using tokens including those that are digitally created yet they fail to tell you that the token does not do that

you need a combination of identity, a ledger such as what bitcoin provides and a number of other aspects to make something that is a innovative token solution

and, tokens outside of the main chain are not innovation at all

CSW
Mar 10, 2021
https://metanet-icu.slack.com/archives/C5131HKFX/p1615368196192800?thread_ts=1615368196.192800&cid=C5131HKFX

https://www.tgoop.com/CSW_Slack/2038

Consequently, the initial assumption that the attack has no cost is flawed. Next, it is a simple attack to detect. The merchant, Bob can simply wait and validate a couple seconds later. I'm doing this, Bob can recheck any issue transaction and cancel it if a double spend is detected. For instance, Alice makes a purchase and releases the block after Bob has handed the coffee across the counter. As he is doing this, Bob detects a new block from Alice. At this point, Bob stops Alice from taking the coffee and also reports her for an attempted theft. If we are talking about remote issue of goods, Bob simply needs to delay issue. Each second that Bob delays results in a higher cost for Alice. As she is waiting, Charlie can validate a new block. As soon as this happens, Alice will fail to propagate in the same way that a selfish mining attack comes 2nd to all blocks from Charlie.

The potential cost would be the complete loss of the miner's business. Such a cost would exceed the cost of the hardware and would be unrecoverable at any level.

All the flaws associated with this understanding of bitcoin are associated with the failure to scale. Scaled, where miners move towards data centres and large operations, the cost of withholding a block become significant.

The error in such an attack is an assumption derived from an anarchist perspective of bitcoin where bitcoin operates without law and without cost. Neither of these assumptions are correct. Bitcoin is a system within law and more importantly, withholding blocks costs a miner in lost revenue. Even if this is a small probabilistic amount, the total overall mining revenue lost in a mere matter of seconds become significant enough to disallow a double spend. Importantly, the block acts as an evidence trail. The merchant now has digitally signed evidence proving that Alice attempted to defraud Bob. This is admissible within courts. Such an attack would not be feasible other than for small sales. This is purely a 0-conf proposed attack and fails against confirmed blocks. As such, any time Bob notices Alice is sent to block extends the time. So if Alice is attempting to defraud Bob and it takes Bob more than a few seconds to permanently issue and ship goods, then Alice will fail.
For instance, if Alice has purchased access to a movie, even if she gains one minute of free viewing, Bob will now be able to stop her seeing any further. If Bob has any time to withhold the goods, for instance he needs to ship an item in this might be picked up for 30 minutes, he will notice and be able to report on Alice's attack.

All of the attacks proposed assume a world without government or law and further ignore revenue and profit as a consideration. The problem with this is that any attack starts with the presumption that law does not exist and extends this into a world that acts without profit motivated merchants.

CSW
Jun 3, 2019
https://metanet-icu.slack.com/archives/C5131HKFX/p1559585872073900?thread_ts=1559579400.047900&cid=C5131HKFX

https://www.tgoop.com/CSW_Slack/2049

For most of this last decade, I have ignored the so-called attacks against bitcoin. I am pulling them apart at the moment and I am astounded about how stupid every one of them is. They are asinine in their childishness and unbelievably ridiculous. The concept proposed in all of them ignores economic realities and law. For any of them to have any chance of working, miners need to act without consideration of profit or revenue. On top of that, they need to forget that they act within the real-world and the law is important.

Every single attack channel that I've been delving into requires that code is law exists to the exclusion of all criminal activity. That is a world without government and without law enforcement. This is not the bitcoin I created and is not the environment I created it for.

All of the attacks come down to unregulated exchanges, bucket shops.

This is not an attack against real world merchants or even normal expenditure. There is not a single attack against bitcoin that works in these environments. What we are considering is purely and simply instant trading ability.

That is the ability for an individual to put money onto an exchange and take it back out again after flipping it into different coins or even tokens and mixing money which could even be for laundering before any suspicious activity can be reported.

This is the entirety of the attack vector that is harped on around bitcoin.

In a regulated exchange, individuals are not going to be able to double spend the exchange in the timeframe proposed for any of these attacks. Importantly, anything here is going to require money-laundering laws apply. That involves KYC.

This is the point no one seems to get, or if they do is about putting their head in the sand to ignore reality. Bitcoin works perfectly well in the real world. All of these changes, all of the manipulation has been about creating a system that works without government, without law and in a code environment where there is no reversibility, and more importantly no oversight ever.

There is not one single scenario that becomes profitable for a merchant or a miner to be associated with. More so when bitcoin scales. As bitcoin scales, all of these issues disappear.

Every one of these attacks is a home user miner attack. It's all in a small undervalued network. Every single one of these attacks requires many coins with little value. This is the nature of what they been doing in their attempt to make something that bitcoin was not designed to be.

CSW
Jun 3, 2019
https://metanet-icu.slack.com/archives/C5131HKFX/p1559587877083200?thread_ts=1559587877.083200&cid=C5131HKFX

https://www.tgoop.com/CSW_Slack/2051

_*To solve this, we proposed a peer-to-peer network using proof-of-work to record a public history of transactions that quickly becomes computationally impractical for an attacker to change if honest nodes control a majority of CPU power.*_

To solve the double spending problem, a peer-to-peer network of economically incentivised to validators was implemented using a publicly auditable trail.

Where the Whitepaper states, "to solve this", it refers not to trust or a concept of ownership, very specifically to the way that all solutions have been "incomplete without a way to prevent double-spending".

Bitcoin implemented an overlay network of users and validator nodes. Uses of the bitcoin system are able to exchange transactions directly over methodologies such as IP to IP or by leaving transactions on the blockchain that can be collected later. In this, the validators act in place of a trusted intermediary to ensure that no double spends, or invalid transactions are allowed. There is a public auditable record of all transactions that occur on the bitcoin network. Any individual can choose to select and view any transaction on the blockchain and ensure that it is accurate.

This however is not necessary due to the competitive nature of the proof of work system within bitcoin. Miners will validators do not seek to get the solution to a block, they seek to find a valid block solution and hash puzzle and have this propagated to all other miners, or at least the majority of them, prior to any other solution being discovered. When a block is discovered, each miner validates that block. They do this as bitcoin is a zero-sum game. Where a miner has discovered a solution to invalid block, the other miners will quickly invalidate it as there are a fixed number of blocks to be discovered in any time period. The system is constructed with a two-week difficulty period that leads to a fixed adjustment every 2016 blocks. The consequence of this is that miners compete not only to find a solution but to invalidate erroneous blocks from other miners. Miners self-regulate and self-enforced their own network.

The system works as long as the majority of miners remain honest and are not able to collude to cheat the system. The only real attack is the ability to double spend. This would allow a miner or other individual to collude in order to defraud a merchant or other party out of a payment. In doing this, the person submitting the transaction to be double spend and the miner colluding with them would be using a false representation or engaged in other forms of deceit. This is analogous to criminal cases where the defendant has used their credit card in full knowledge that they have exceeded their credit limit. They have made a purchase using a false representation that they had the authority to use the card and that the card issuer would honour the transaction (R v Lambie [1982] A.C. 449 HL).

This is a deceit-based crime as the perpetrator will have needed to sign multiple transactions using the same input coin. That is, they have fraudulently represented that the coin that they are giving to a merchant is unencumbered.

This scenario is possible where an individual believes they will get away with the act. One of the key aspects of fraud is a belief that you can commit the crime and not be detected. In the case of miners, both transactions would be available on the network. In particular, both the merchant and the miner would hold separate signed transactions. The merchant would be able to demonstrate that other miners had a copy of a publicly available double spent transaction. In some ways, this is analogous to a scenario where a criminal tries to pass off a fraudulent check and then comes back and delivers a signed statement that they have committed a crime around 10 minutes later.

CSW
Sep 24, 2019
https://metanet-icu.slack.com/archives/C5131HKFX/p1569339721257300?thread_ts=1569339673.256900&cid=C5131HKFX

1/4
It is not the hash rate or the algorithm that secures bitcoin. Bitcoin is not a cryptographic system but is an economic system that uses cryptography. This is a major distinction. Authors such as those working on proof of work in the past misunderstood the nature of an economic medium. It is not how much proof of work you can do at any one time, it is how much you can do towards the marketing of the commodity you're selling, the proof of work that you have invested. Bitcoin is not secured by proof of work at all. Bitcoin is secured by validation of transactions and the ordering of those transactions into blocks. Proof of work is just a means of proving incentive. It's a defined investment. It measures the willingness of a party to invest in securing the network.

Where people go wrong is in assuming that it is all about some anonymous cryptographic system. I didn't build bitcoin to be like ecash or any of those other failed dead-end systems.

The proof work tokens developed in bitcoin are a byproduct of the ordering of transactions. There should be no limit on the number of transactions in a block. This limit does not matter because organisations and companies compete to profitably structure a block that will be validated by other miners. Only then does proof of work matter. As the block reward subsidy vanishes, the transaction fees become more and more important. In time, a miner who does not primarily concentrate on ordering transactions will gain little to no renumeration.

Because of the larger value associated with the block reward when coupled with the hobbled or restricted nature of bitcoin core and the excessive limit to 1 MB per block, BTC has misled people into believing that the hashing component is the primary concern on how you secured the network. It is not. More importantly, people involved with this industry including the building of machines associated with a single purpose in hashing have mislead people into believing that bitcoin is all about a technical solution and that it can act outside of law.

The simple answer is that bitcoin is an incentive system.

Hashing is a game theoretic signalling system. Bitcoin miners signal that they are willing to lose money and risk in keeping the network secure. They are willing to pay large sums of money to invest in the network and this demonstrates a long-term commitment. Most importantly, it involves a large fixed asset capital base that is at risk if these miners seek to act outside the law. The biggest control in bitcoin mining is the existing legal system. A miner who decides to act outside of the law with enough hash power to overpower the honest nodes in the network is simple to detect. Most importantly, they provide signed evidence that is admissible in court and allows criminal prosecutions. Additionally, other miners would legally be able to take action.

Action would include anti-competitive behaviour and other protections that are associated with cartel-based action.

I am not seeking an anarchist solution and I never promised one.

With the hash rate it has, BSV is not subject to attack. In order to attack even the hash rate, we have now requires miners actively engaging themselves using a large data centre to focus on double spending. In the UK, the fraud act covers services when related to deceptive criminal activities. The definition of services see Archbold 2010, Pp 21-408. The service is one that is provided for a paid amount. Where a service is obtained without payment, the fraud act will not apply in this manner. Bitcoin miners are paid a transaction fee and block subsidy for their actions, this is enough to be covered under the basis of the UK act. This makes them chargeable and consequently they come under and within the ambit of Section 11 (R v Sofroniou [2003] EWCA Crim 3681).

CSW
Sep 26, 2019
https://metanet-icu.slack.com/archives/C5131HKFX/p1569512498022800?thread_ts=1569512498.022800&cid=C5131HKFX
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https://www.tgoop.com/CSW_Slack/2077