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Bitcoin is a crypto-currency/blockchain. Coinbase is a corporation that allows users to buy/trade crypto-currencies. With Bitcoin you do not get government bai

Bitcoin is a crypto-currency/blockchain. Coinbase is a corporation that allows users to buy/trade crypto-currencies. With Bitcoin you do not get government bailouts like what happened with the beyond reckless banks in 2008.

arcanemachiner 1y ago
> With Bitcoin you do not get government bailouts like what happened during the beyond reckless banks in 2008 It is not beyond imagination that the most popular Bitcoin blockchain (and thus, the label of being the "real" Bitcoin) could change at some point in the future. "Bitcoin" is not immune from the implications of political fuckery.
- adastra22 1y ago
  By what mechanism? The whole point of bitcoin is that you can’t force a consensus change. This is enforced by the algorithm and the laws of thermodynamics.
  - arcanemachiner 1y ago
    If, for whatever reason, all the mining power switches to the other chain, it will become the de facto "Bitcoin". I don't know what the specific mechanism would be, but I would bet that it relates to the billions of dollars backing the current ecosystem, and the interests of the people behind them. If the right event or crisis comes along, then people could be compelled to switch over to something else. I'm sure there's someone out there still mining blocks on that chain with the exploit from 2010, but that's not where the mining power is. If the right series of events occurs, the miners will switch.
    - wat10000 1y ago
      If literally 100% of miners switched, leaving zero on the original chain, then people will have no choice since it won’t do any more transactions. But if, say, a mere 99% of miners switch, it’s far from a given that people would follow. Having more mining capacity makes the chain more secure, but it’s not that big of a deal.
      - andirk 11mo ago
        And anyone can become a miner. It's not reasonable on small rigs because there are so many miners now, but if most of them leave, then the common man can get back in to mining.
        wat10000 11mo ago
        There is an interesting failure mode, though. Bitcoin is supposed to adjust mining difficult every two weeks to maintain the pace of roughly one block every 10 minutes. But that interval is based on block count, not time. Adjustment happens every 2016 blocks. If miners suddenly fled en masse, it’s possible for the chain to be left stranded where the small number of miners remaining couldn’t realistically get to the next 2016-block interval to adjust the difficulty down to match the drastically decreased mining capacity. If mining capacity dropped by a factor of 1000 and it happened right after an adjustment, then bitcoin would be producing about one block every week, and it would take about 40 years (if mining capacity stayed constant) to reach the next adjustment.
        adastra22 11mo ago
        This is well known and studied. I’ve produced and field tested an alternative, close to optimal adjustment algorithm and the code for a soft-fork transition. This could enable a set of miners to get “pre-agreement” on transaction ordering in an out of band forward block chain while they work to fight down the difficulty of the old chain. https://freico.in/forward-blocks-scalingbitcoin-paper.pdf https://freico.in/forward-blocks-scalingbitcoin-paper.pdf
    - csomar 1y ago
      > If, for whatever reason, all the mining power switches to the other chain, it will become the de facto "Bitcoin". The miners do not control the network. The people transacting on the network control the network and decides who is rich and who is not; and whether the miners get paid or not.
  - SpicyLemonZest 11mo ago
    What you can do, and what has been done in the past, is get a critical mass of large cryptocurrency actors to agree that a protocol change should be applied and that the results of that protocol change are called "Bitcoin". As the Bitcoin Cash folks quickly realized, it's not tenable to try and maintain a disagreement with Coinbase and large miners about about what the Bitcoin protocol is; if you don't want to accept the upgrade, your only practical option is to make a fork and call it something else.
- KetoManx64 1y ago
  Bitcoin has forked a few times it's creation: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_bitcoin_forks https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_bitcoin_forks The determining factor for which fork is successfully is bases on the Bitcoin node runners and miners choosing which fork they devote their resources to. Governments around the world are 100% attempting different plans to destabilize or destroy Bitcoin because it harms their interests and ability to print money from thin air. But at the end of the day it's a distributed ledger, so even if they do find a way to manipulate or damage or takeover the network the Bitcoin users can just fork it from before they did their damage and continue from there. That is the ultimate power of a decentralized blockchain, nobody has ultimate power and everyone votes with their resources.
  - nradov 1y ago
    Power comes from the barrel of a gun.
    - KetoManx64 1y ago
      Yes. That is why the Second Amendment is so important. It reminds those in the government not to overstep their bounds.
      - onraglanroad 1y ago
        [flagged]
        KetoManx64 1y ago
        [flagged]
        scubbo 1y ago
        https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XkCBhKs4faI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XkCBhKs4faI
dahinds 1y ago
"With Bitcoin you do not get government bailouts" -- yeah maybe not yet? Is it beyond belief that a government with leadership deeply invested in crypto currencies might take action if something super disruptive happens?
- KetoManx64 1y ago
  Possible. But Bitcoin is hard capped at 21 million coins. The government can peint more paper money to bail a company out if it makes stupid decisions, but they cannot print more Bitcoin. This will devalue the paper currency even more and also increase the value of Bitcoin. Bitcoin is called a hedge against inflation for a reason.
  - robocat 1y ago
    At present BTC is usually denominated in USD. Until I start to see BTC used as the cross-rate I'm sceptical. Presuming it occurs, it would occur relatively quickly?
    - KetoManx64 1y ago
      Square just pushed out the ability to pay in Bitcoin to millions of retailers this last week: https://www.forbes.com/sites/digital-assets/2025/11/11/bitcoin-is-a-step-closer-to-being-money-with-square-bitcoin-launch/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/digital-assets/2025/11/11/bitco... We're right on the corner of that very day that you're talking about.
      - arcticbull 1y ago
        That's yet another example of denominated in USD, and converted to BTC at the last second. Obviously, because of the insane volatility.
  - kibwen 1y ago
    > But Bitcoin is hard capped at 21 million coins Bitcoin is not an immutable law of nature. If the coin minting cap is reached, all that needs to happen is for miners to start running a fork with a higher cap. Tada, more coins conjured out of the ether, just like all the previous ones. If you want enforced scarcity, you need to be tied to something physically scarce.
immibis 1y ago
There was a government* bailout in Ethereum, however. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_DAO https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_DAO The government of Ethereum is not the US government.
- KetoManx64 1y ago
  I don't see a reference to a government bailout in the article you listed. The chain was forked by the community to the state before the hack and most users switched over this supporting this fork and calling it Etherium going forward.
  - immibis 1y ago
    The chain was forked, ultimately, by Vitalik Buterin - the president of Ethereum - and his cabinet. Calling a thing by different words doesn't make it a different thing.
    - hvb2 1y ago
      Your dictionary would disagree? By that logic every company is a government?
      - immibis 11mo ago
        Yes, actually, and the bigger the company is, the bigger the government it is. Apple is more powerful than many small- to medium-size countries.
    - KetoManx64 11mo ago
      One goverment you have to pay taxes to in order to stay out of jail and don't get to make any real choices about how much money it prints out of thin air.. The other is an organization body that you freely choose to associate with, eg: using Etherium. I don't understand how you can conflate the two. Vitalik did not print billions of dollars out of thin air and then force every citizen of the US to bear that cost through the inflation of the US dollar eating away at their savings and investments.
dclowd9901 1y ago
I would be willing to bet the current administration would in fact do whatever they could to undermine the dollar's value, including propping up a digital currency when it should fail.

arcanemachiner 1y ago

> With Bitcoin you do not get government bailouts like what happened during the beyond reckless banks in 2008 It is not beyond imagination that the most popular Bitcoin blockchain (and thus, the label of being the "real" Bitcoin) could change at some point in the future. "Bitcoin" is not immune from the implications of political fuckery.

adastra22 1y ago
By what mechanism? The whole point of bitcoin is that you can’t force a consensus change. This is enforced by the algorithm and the laws of thermodynamics.
- arcanemachiner 1y ago
  If, for whatever reason, all the mining power switches to the other chain, it will become the de facto "Bitcoin". I don't know what the specific mechanism would be, but I would bet that it relates to the billions of dollars backing the current ecosystem, and the interests of the people behind them. If the right event or crisis comes along, then people could be compelled to switch over to something else. I'm sure there's someone out there still mining blocks on that chain with the exploit from 2010, but that's not where the mining power is. If the right series of events occurs, the miners will switch.
  - wat10000 1y ago
    If literally 100% of miners switched, leaving zero on the original chain, then people will have no choice since it won’t do any more transactions. But if, say, a mere 99% of miners switch, it’s far from a given that people would follow. Having more mining capacity makes the chain more secure, but it’s not that big of a deal.
    - andirk 11mo ago
      And anyone can become a miner. It's not reasonable on small rigs because there are so many miners now, but if most of them leave, then the common man can get back in to mining.
      - wat10000 11mo ago
        There is an interesting failure mode, though. Bitcoin is supposed to adjust mining difficult every two weeks to maintain the pace of roughly one block every 10 minutes. But that interval is based on block count, not time. Adjustment happens every 2016 blocks. If miners suddenly fled en masse, it’s possible for the chain to be left stranded where the small number of miners remaining couldn’t realistically get to the next 2016-block interval to adjust the difficulty down to match the drastically decreased mining capacity. If mining capacity dropped by a factor of 1000 and it happened right after an adjustment, then bitcoin would be producing about one block every week, and it would take about 40 years (if mining capacity stayed constant) to reach the next adjustment.
        adastra22 11mo ago
        This is well known and studied. I’ve produced and field tested an alternative, close to optimal adjustment algorithm and the code for a soft-fork transition. This could enable a set of miners to get “pre-agreement” on transaction ordering in an out of band forward block chain while they work to fight down the difficulty of the old chain. https://freico.in/forward-blocks-scalingbitcoin-paper.pdf https://freico.in/forward-blocks-scalingbitcoin-paper.pdf
  - csomar 1y ago
    > If, for whatever reason, all the mining power switches to the other chain, it will become the de facto "Bitcoin". The miners do not control the network. The people transacting on the network control the network and decides who is rich and who is not; and whether the miners get paid or not.
- SpicyLemonZest 11mo ago
  What you can do, and what has been done in the past, is get a critical mass of large cryptocurrency actors to agree that a protocol change should be applied and that the results of that protocol change are called "Bitcoin". As the Bitcoin Cash folks quickly realized, it's not tenable to try and maintain a disagreement with Coinbase and large miners about about what the Bitcoin protocol is; if you don't want to accept the upgrade, your only practical option is to make a fork and call it something else.
KetoManx64 1y ago
Bitcoin has forked a few times it's creation: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_bitcoin_forks https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_bitcoin_forks The determining factor for which fork is successfully is bases on the Bitcoin node runners and miners choosing which fork they devote their resources to. Governments around the world are 100% attempting different plans to destabilize or destroy Bitcoin because it harms their interests and ability to print money from thin air. But at the end of the day it's a distributed ledger, so even if they do find a way to manipulate or damage or takeover the network the Bitcoin users can just fork it from before they did their damage and continue from there. That is the ultimate power of a decentralized blockchain, nobody has ultimate power and everyone votes with their resources.
- nradov 1y ago
  Power comes from the barrel of a gun.
  - KetoManx64 1y ago
    Yes. That is why the Second Amendment is so important. It reminds those in the government not to overstep their bounds.
    - onraglanroad 1y ago
      [flagged]
      - KetoManx64 1y ago
        [flagged]
        scubbo 1y ago
        https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XkCBhKs4faI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XkCBhKs4faI

dahinds 1y ago

"With Bitcoin you do not get government bailouts" -- yeah maybe not yet? Is it beyond belief that a government with leadership deeply invested in crypto currencies might take action if something super disruptive happens?

KetoManx64 1y ago
Possible. But Bitcoin is hard capped at 21 million coins. The government can peint more paper money to bail a company out if it makes stupid decisions, but they cannot print more Bitcoin. This will devalue the paper currency even more and also increase the value of Bitcoin. Bitcoin is called a hedge against inflation for a reason.
- robocat 1y ago
  At present BTC is usually denominated in USD. Until I start to see BTC used as the cross-rate I'm sceptical. Presuming it occurs, it would occur relatively quickly?
  - KetoManx64 1y ago
    Square just pushed out the ability to pay in Bitcoin to millions of retailers this last week: https://www.forbes.com/sites/digital-assets/2025/11/11/bitcoin-is-a-step-closer-to-being-money-with-square-bitcoin-launch/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/digital-assets/2025/11/11/bitco... We're right on the corner of that very day that you're talking about.
    - arcticbull 1y ago
      That's yet another example of denominated in USD, and converted to BTC at the last second. Obviously, because of the insane volatility.
- kibwen 1y ago
  > But Bitcoin is hard capped at 21 million coins Bitcoin is not an immutable law of nature. If the coin minting cap is reached, all that needs to happen is for miners to start running a fork with a higher cap. Tada, more coins conjured out of the ether, just like all the previous ones. If you want enforced scarcity, you need to be tied to something physically scarce.

immibis 1y ago

There was a government* bailout in Ethereum, however. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_DAO https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_DAO The government of Ethereum is not the US government.

KetoManx64 1y ago
I don't see a reference to a government bailout in the article you listed. The chain was forked by the community to the state before the hack and most users switched over this supporting this fork and calling it Etherium going forward.
- immibis 1y ago
  The chain was forked, ultimately, by Vitalik Buterin - the president of Ethereum - and his cabinet. Calling a thing by different words doesn't make it a different thing.
  - hvb2 1y ago
    Your dictionary would disagree? By that logic every company is a government?
    - immibis 11mo ago
      Yes, actually, and the bigger the company is, the bigger the government it is. Apple is more powerful than many small- to medium-size countries.
  - KetoManx64 11mo ago
    One goverment you have to pay taxes to in order to stay out of jail and don't get to make any real choices about how much money it prints out of thin air.. The other is an organization body that you freely choose to associate with, eg: using Etherium. I don't understand how you can conflate the two. Vitalik did not print billions of dollars out of thin air and then force every citizen of the US to bear that cost through the inflation of the US dollar eating away at their savings and investments.

dclowd9901 1y ago

I would be willing to bet the current administration would in fact do whatever they could to undermine the dollar's value, including propping up a digital currency when it should fail.