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The difference is the bankers have authority and compliance by way of force. That is, government controls currency, you pay your taxes in dollars, you trade you
by doggosphere 5y ago
The difference is the bankers have authority and compliance by way of force. That is, government controls currency, you pay your taxes in dollars, you trade your oil in dollars, etc., or else.
Crypto groups do not have this authority, and cannot impose their will beyond what the masses will accept. They compete with forks and alternative products. Some chains don't even use mining, some use alternate algorithms where SHA-256 ASICs have no advantage. If powerful groups try to force unpopular change, they'll just split the chain and more or less divide the value proportionally to the user-base that they can convince to join them.
We saw this with Bitcoin Cash, Ethereum Classic, etc. So if the Bitcoin network does something I don't like, I have the option of leaving and supporting one of the potential forks I do like. Force cannot be imposed, and products must compete. This is one of the advantages of open source, decentralized software design.
- jayd16 5y agoIs splitting a real solution? Why can't that powerful group, which had control of the original chain take control of this new fork?
- CyberDildonics 5y agoI think you mean to ask "why didn't they" since this has already happened multiple times in the past. The answer is that miners would have to take mining power away from the chain that they were mining. In practice the mining power that each chain receives is proportional to its current price. This is also something all the people upset about the electricity that bitcoin mining takes up need to understand. The electricity is being paid for by the people buying the balances that the miners mine. If people weren't buying the massive miner rewards every 10 minutes, the price of bitcoin would not stay the same and the same electricity usage would not be viable.
- doggosphere 5y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fork_(software_development) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fork_(software_development) Confused about what you mean by "take control" of the new fork. The powerful miners are going to download a different set of software with different rules, and mine on it? That would just be supporting the new fork by participating on it, giving it more legitimacy by way of giving it resources (hash power). *EDIT: You can certainly attack a chain by dedicating your hash power to sabotaging their blocks. This however would make your own chain weaker, and generally not a profitable use of resources.
- ertian 5y agoBy what mechanism would they do so?
- jayd16 5y agoBy again dominating the hashrate. I suppose a new system could be proposed though.