Thank you for your clarifications. I think we are mostly on the same page. In fact I agree with just about everything you wrote here! The only caveat is that I think non transacting nodes still have voting power. To what degree is uncertain.

You could be HODLing a block reward for decades without making a transaction. However you would likely run a node and vote through the software you decide to run and seemingly just be another number in the graph. I suppose you could argue that the block reward is technically a transaction. Is HODLing technically transacting? How many transactions are necessary to enforce the consensus? 1? more? Can someone support and enforce Bitcoin without actually using it via a transaction? Could a person living with generational wealth like the idea and run a node just to support what Bitcoin represents for the world without actually accepting Bitcoin since they have no personal economic need for it?

I don't think transacting is necessary to have a say or enforce the rules. I agree that the raw numbers don't necessarily determine consensus but they are a useful metric and could signal general consensus. Consensus is not black and white nor easily measurable. Its very perplexing and fascinating.

Thank you for your insights. Definitely some interesting threads to investigate here. The rabbit hole just keeps going and I love it =)

Ok, I get what you are saying now. Thank you for that explanation.

Yes that makes sense. I think you are correct that economic nodes are much more important to users than non-economic nodes. However, I'm not sure it matters in terms of voting.

Here you can see how many nodes are running which version of Bitcoin's software, but I don't know how you could tell which ones are utilizing it for transaction verification and which ones aren't.

How would one then verify which node's vote is weighted higher than others and by how much? I think over the long term, you are correct because economic nodes will outlast non-economic nodes as there is no real benefit to pay to run a node if you aren't using it to verify your own transactions.

This is definitely an interesting idea that I will be thinking more about. Thanks!

No worries, you're good. This is a great conversation. Can you give an explanation of how transacting enforces the rules?

A UTXO doesn't reside on a specific node. You may be referring to customers using exchanges, however exchanges don't care what holders on their platform think. They only exist to profit from trades. They don't profit more if you hold one fork or the other (unless its POS). They may still have their own opinion but it doesn't matter any more than any other node. For example, Coinbase sided with big blockers and had the most economic resources behind them. Their node had no extra influence than my node did.

Bitcoin is not here for fiat gains. It does not care who holds more and neither do we. It is here to replace fiat. The side effect of success just happens to be that its worth more fiat. We are opting out of their corrupt trash and ultimately care not where their fiat garbage goes. If fiat is end game, then Bitcoin was dead before it even began.

Cool! I love the poster! Well done! :)

Regarding the price, the majority of people who own Bitcoin do not run a node. However in order to transact, they are sending Bitcoin via a node running Bitcoin's consensus rules. Are you saying economic actors have more control than node runners even though Bitcoin software itself has no concept of fiat, marketcaps, and exchange rates?

Thought experiment: If the US government prints ungodly amounts of fiat and throws it into Bitcoin Cash or another fork does that then become Bitcoin? If so, whats the point of running Bitcoin?

You only exert pressure on the price which is pretty much irrelevant to Bitcoin consensus. Bitcoin had consensus before a price existed for bitcoin. Many shitcoin forks have had higher gains and price than bitcoin but consensus didn't move.

The software you run signals consensus as it signals what the users want and what they use. This is relevant to soft forks as well. For example, if no one upgraded to use Taproot addresses and functionality after the soft fork then consensus shows that that the soft fork was irrelevant and signals the devs to find better solutions.

Miners showed majority support for increasing the raw block size but it was the node runners who said no and maintained consensus. Node runners have much bigger signal and influence than you give credit for.

This is not true. If you need a UTXO to have a say in Bitcoin consensus rules then Bitcoin is Proof of Stake which it is not. Running a node is having a say/vote in consensus rules because it matters what software you run. When the majority run the same consensus rules as you, you are within consensus. You can vote by running different rules ie (42 million bitcoin) but if the majority of node runners and miners don't join you then you are not running Bitcoin. A UTXO is not required to have a vote.

Someone tried that a couple years ago. It was called Light Nite and it was a Battle Royal game. You could earn sats and withdraw on the LN. They even had Jack Mallers and some other influencers play it while being recorded. It was on Steam for a bit then got kicked off. Apparently, it never got enough traction so they turned to NFT's and minting their own shitcoin for the in game currency. I think it's dead now. lol

Welcome! 👋

Cheers!

Thanks! Stay strong, HODL on

Greetings!

Happy to be here!

Thanks!

iVPN silent.link These accept Monero too so maybe doesn't count toward what your looking for but its safe to say if they only accept only Bitcoin and Monero they are on the right path.

Getting ready to release a physical product that lets you quickly roll and find your seed phrase without assistance from any electronic devices (other than getting the checksum word). Going to bring the first prototypes to my local Bitcoin meetup tonight.