2407 sats \ 22 comments \ @south_korea_ln 26 Feb bitcoin

Imagine this scenario, completely hypothetical

Antonopoulos's prediction that two kinds of Bitcoin will coexist has come true. Indeed, state-approved Bitcoin and self-hosted Bitcoin are happily coexisting.
It has become impossible to transit between the two kinds, indeed, exchanges only allow for Bitcoin that has no dirty history. The tools to track this have become perfectly reliable.
Surprisingly, state-approved bitcoins are worth millions in today's dollars. Self-hosted Bitcoin has become nearly worthless, a few dollars per Bitcoin.
The state still cannot block people from using self-hosted Bitcoin, as intended. Yet, people are sheep, other than a few idealists, everyone is happily using state-approved Bitcoin as it has shown its value as a store of value and as a medium of exchange.
Self-hosted Bitcoin is almost useless. Except for the few idealists, no one accepts it. You can barely buy things with it as most shops have decided to use the state-approved Bitcoin.

This is the background of the scenario.

Now, the government has decided they want to have full control over all 21M Bitcoin. They want to merge the self-hosted Bitcoin network into the state-approved Bitcoin.

For this, they've decided to use the time-tested approach of giving amnesty. Indeed, in the before-times, in countries where guns were illegal, giving amnesty was the best way to get people to turn in their guns. It had a 99% success rate.

Similarly, they intend that by having people transfer all the self-hosted Bitcoin into the state-approved network, without penalty or punishment, many people will do so.

By choosing to transition to the state-approved Bitcoin, the dollar value of your Bitcoin suddenly goes up in value, say by a factor of 1 million. You become a dollar-millionaire or even a billionaire. You are rich beyond the grave. However, this comes at the cost that you forsake your values. You betray everything Bitcoin stands for. You can only use Bitcoin for state-approved transactions.

You should also make the assumption that you are not a criminal. For some hypothetical reason, you have no need to evade taxes. You can buy everything you need and want in the legal circuit.

Adding the additional assumption that you can trust the state not to punish you and that this is a true amnesty, how would you answer the poll?

Summary of your choices

I stay in the self-hosted network. Bitcoin the way it was intended. You are poor, your Bitcoin is nearly worthless, you can transact with it freely with fellow idealists.
I move to the state-approved netwrok. You move to the 0.1% of the super-rich. Bitcoin is not being used the way Satoshi intended it. It is a great store of value, but the government can tax it, the government can block you from buying drugs or anything else they deem illegal. They will not confiscate your Bitcoin however.

Purpose of this hypothetical

By adding all these, probably not-so-realistic assumptions that you can trust the state to abide by a true amnesty, I want to see how many of us are in it for a number-go-up (NGU) scenario, and how much actually care about a decentralized, permissionless, and trustless network.

Disclaimer

This is just for fun. My definition of fun might be different from yours. I do know all these assumptions are not realistic. I would imagine that in reality, the permissionless network will be more valuable than the state-approved one. In reality, you should also not trust the state to change the rules a posteriori.

I stay in the self-hosted network80.0%

I move to the state-approved network20.0%

30 votes \ poll ended

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71 sats \ 3 replies \ @Coinsreporter 26 Feb

Just adding to you hypotheses. If state approved Network owns 51% of all 21 Million Bitcoins some day, will that be the day when they declare war against self-hosted network. Will they control it all by only having a 51% on state network?

43 sats \ 2 replies \ @OriginalSize 26 Feb

No, Bitcoin is not proof of stake. If they asserted control over mining there could be fork away from sha256.

71 sats \ 1 reply \ @Coinsreporter 26 Feb

So it means there's nothing wrong even if the state approved Network accumulates maximum of the supply. They can't alter or manipulate Bitcoin.

10 sats \ 0 replies \ @OriginalSize 26 Feb

Correct. It's a two-way door as well. Coins can exit the state-approved regime too.

130 sats \ 4 replies \ @Scoresby 26 Feb

This is a pretty tough scenario. Its hard to imagine a situation where there is a significant amount of self-hosted bitcoin AND the dramatic price difference of your hypothetical.

As you note in your disclaimer, the permissionless network is one of the major value propositions of bitcoin. So it's kinda mentally difficult to imagine it both exists AND has no value.

Maybe a question that gets at the same idea (who's here for number go up) is what would you do if bitcoin forked to add in some kind of massive block size increase or transition off proof of work and all the etfs go with that fork and so price goes up for the fork the day it goes live? Poll answers could be: sell gov't fork, sell bitcoin classic, keep both.

160 sats \ 3 replies \ @south_korea_ln OP 26 Feb

I fully agree, this is an extreme hypothetical. I could actually have rephrased it completely differently and with a much simpler yes or no question.

Do you accept to take 1 billion dollars to never use Bitcoin again?

Just thought it more fun to do it this way and provide a backstory... albeit a very unrealistic one.

EDIT: your suggested question indeed achieves a similar goal.

10 sats \ 2 replies \ @Scoresby 26 Feb

I answered that I'd keep my self hosted btc but it was entirely an answer in denial: there's no way that shitty captured btc is worth as much as my free range sats!

40 sats \ 1 reply \ @south_korea_ln OP 26 Feb

Haha, at least you're being honest that if this scenario ever happens, you'd entertain, if ever so briefly, the idea of - what fiat-maximalists call - cashing out.

10 sats \ 0 replies \ @south_korea_ln OP 26 Feb

(my words, not yours~~)

120 sats \ 1 reply \ @aoeu 26 Feb

For me it would depend on whether I'm poor but still able to provide my family with the things we need OR poor and starving to death. My ideology would change if it was a matter of survival.

If it was a 6102 situation I would not give up my keys.

40 sats \ 0 replies \ @south_korea_ln OP 26 Feb

I think that's a very reasonable mindset. I'd give anything to support my family, even if it means giving up on some principles. I hope it never comes to that though. Reality is rarely black and white, luckily.

12 sats \ 0 replies \ @OriginalSize 26 Feb

It's more likely the values are reversed. They'll attempt to suppress state-approved coin but will have no power over the informal economy.

11 sats \ 1 reply \ @JesseJames 26 Feb

Naa thanks, let's keep the separation of Bitcoin and State, shall we? :-) This is the "sly about way" they can't control and they will not. Nice story, but I will pass.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @south_korea_ln OP 26 Feb

A definite "option 1" for you then... the way Satoshi intended :)

11 sats \ 1 reply \ @brandonsbytes 26 Feb

I had never heard of this theory. is there a link to Antonopoulos talking about it?

21 sats \ 0 replies \ @south_korea_ln OP 26 Feb

I had never heard of this theory. is there a link to Antonopoulos talking about it?

I can't find a direct link, it is just something that stayed with me after listening to his material in recent years. Or maybe my memory is failing me and it's a synthesis of different ideas from different people, not sure. But there definitely have been people hypothesizing about two parallel Bitcoin networks. I'll come back to this if/when I find it.

1 sat \ 0 replies \ @SpaceHodler 26 Feb

Why would the self-hosted bitcoin become nearly worthless? It grew in price massively before the state-approved version was even a thing. State approved bitcoin is controlled by the state and can be confiscated, what's the value proposition?

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @john_doe 26 Feb

I answered the first, stay in the self-hosted network. Nonetheless I think the choice of answers provided is hardly realistic... Or then, what does rich mean? If I can see movies with torrents thanks to a peer to peer network, what does cinephile means? Can someone who never goes to the cinema be cinephile? Even if we don't watch state approved movies, can't we consider ourselves rich in terms of movies as long as we we watch the same thing, just in a different format? That being said, I went into Bitcoin because conceptually there was not a big leap between p2p files and p2p money. I was excited by the first one, got excited as well by the later, and I used a hardware wallet since day one. For the division into 2 networks, I believe eventually the State will fail as it did with movies.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @Tef 26 Feb

Since this is all hypothetical, I’ll add another hypothesis: if it’s a matter of survival and I have no other way to provide the necessary resources for living, I probably would transfer some of my bitcoins into the state-approved network, but not all the bitcoins.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @Rex 26 Feb

You are assuming that the situation does not exist and that settlements between countries will not be settled using paper Bitcoin. Bitcoin is designed not to rely on third-party trust institutions to operate, because if there are third-party trust institutions, there will be institutions that fail. The failure of the third-party trust institution will cause the collapse of paper Bitcoin. Every paper Bitcoin crash that happens drives people back to the original Bitcoin system.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @hynek 26 Feb

Difference in price could be caused by transaction costs. Imagine being able to transfer for free via Wallet of Satoshi or costly permissionless…

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @hynek 26 Feb

I would probably cash out small portion of the stack. If it isn’t feasible then rather keep everything in real bitcoin.