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I haven't read this one yet, but am confused by option 3: who says that leads to death?
He is being dramatic but essentially he argues if there is no freeze every institution would exit bitcoin.
I don’t think it would kill Bitcoin but the largest hack in human history and a potentially malicious actor controlling 1.7M coins would be pretty darn catastrophic.
It’s a good piece even if you disagree with a lot of what he has to say.
I'm curious about this argument. IF these machines are built, which I'm not convinced the engineering is anywhere close to accomplishing yet, and if some malicious actor (or actors?) competes with other quantum operators to get the entire lump (doubtful in my mind, since there would be a race and lots of game theory playing out), why is this so tragic? The fiat price dumps? Yeah. That's nothing new. Larry Fink finds another way to fuck up the world? Good. I simply don't see this giant downside.
I agree with your points regarding quantum computing capabilities and the game theory. Who knows if this will even be an issue for decades to come and who knows who recovers and coins and if they ever sell them.
However in the scenario that Nic lays out I do think it would be catastrophic to bitcoin. Maybe not existential but we are talking probably a lost decade. Meanwhile you have other cryptos that will happily go along with what the institutions want and are now getting all the capital flow that comes out of Bitcoin.
Bitcoin likely survives but is maybe permanently wounded.
Meanwhile you have other cryptos that will happily go along with what the institutions want and are now getting all the capital flow that comes out of Bitcoin.
Nic will be a cheerleader, rooting on one of his shitcoins. Why listen to this scammer at all?
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I think he is being chicken little about the quantum risk because he is a VC in a crypto quantum company so I am not dismissing his incentives here but I don't think he is completely wrong about the potential ramifications if an actual quantum attack did occur.
Maybe I am pessimistic but the newer wave of Bitcoin investors (the ones that have bought up all the coins OGs have sold) don't seem to understand Bitcoin at all and they don't seem interested in learning either. It is just another asset for them. I suppose it was inevitable that later adopters were never going to be as ideologically connected to the project as early adopters but I feel like this makes Bitcoin more vulnerable that it was during other times of crisis. Again maybe I am too pessimistic. It's been a disappointing couple of years. Feels like grassroots adoption is dying and wall st adoption is growing. I expected the rest of the world to keep grassroots adoption alive while the US went through its wall st coin phase. Hasn't really happened and that leaves me thinking other than the most hardened and passionate Bitcoiners where is the demand when everyone else in the world is selling?
I sometimes feel that way too. But, I think about that msm article somebody posted the other day about how stable coins have been the real cypherpunk legacy, ironically saving the dollar. The first time Uncle Sam freezes some "terrorist group"'s USDC, or some nation that is engaging in "anti semitic acts", the world will understand bitcoin's value.
And Nic wants to give Satoshi's coins to the US government? Who listens to this shitbag?
At a bitcoin meetup last night this was also the general opinion:
pretty much everybody was in the camp of: what is the problem? if someone figures out how to get satoshi's coins, they are now the new owner of satoshi's coins. "mind your own coins"
(the only concern was the thought that if multiple quantum computers were to be discovered around the same time, there might be competition over the who gets satoshi's coins and in that case, the size of the prize is big enough that contenders would be likely to offer miners very high fees and the network might experience a pretty rough time of reorgs as miners fought to reorg out transactions moving satoshi's coins)
In Carter's piece, he draws the lines on this issue between the
Freeze camp (financial investors, institutions, fiduciaries)
and the
Do not freeze camp (hardcore Bitcoin maxis, some developers, ideologues)
And it does feel to me like these are where the lines are drawn. But economic nodes are what carry the network, and it's hard not to see how the nodes that control Coinbase, MSTR, IBIT, and all the other big piles of coins don't out weigh the rest of us...
I'm not sure I see how this plays out. It might not even require a real quantum computer to ever materialize to result in a pretty unpleasant situation.
You posted a good article a while back about the theoretical v. engineering issues involved. Do you still have that link? One other thing. Excuse my ignorance, but who specifically are the economic nodes with all the sway? It can't be etfs, since coinbase is the custodian. Saylor certainly would have a say. Has he weighed in? Blockstream? Of course coinbase?
who are the economic nodes with all the sway
Great point -- I'm treating IBIT/MSTR/Coinbase as a monolith, and I probably shouldn't. I don't believe I have heard specific statements by any of those entities about quantum. But I suspect they are closer to the Nic Carter approach than to the Bitcoin Maxi approach.
If they back a fork that burns Satoshi's coins, and people like us don't like it, there's a real possibility we become something like Bitcoin Classic. I wonder what that would do to hashrate.
Also, did you notice the change in terminology? When this debate was happening last summer it was "Burn or Steal" and now it's "Freeze or Do not Freeze." Freeze is just a nice way of saying burn.
Satoshi's coins should go to the US government? Is this satire?
ever noticed how all the SBR coins are confiscated, while all the Saylor coins are bought with Fiat?
ever noticed how Saylor has been in the game since dot-com bust times?
ever noticed how no matter how many coins Saylor buys, the price stays the same?
ever thought it's an op?
Has this been verified on the blockchain? Like have a million more coins come under custodians?
what means SBR?