A highly centralized ownership situation that leads to forks that rot Bitcoin from the inside.

Theoretically, with a homos economicus mindset, Bitcoin never changes its ruleset into something that hurts decentralization since we already have a highly decentralized owner base that would defend themselves.

In practical terms, a lot of the people that "have" Bitcoin use centralized custodians such as exchanges and ETFs. In fork situations, their custodians have the ultimate power to decide. Plus, the profile of someone who leaves their stack with a custodian is probably not the one that will do a lot of research into Bitcoin internals and have strong opinions on what's the right thing to do in a fork.

So, how's this an issue? You might be thinking to yourself that you can always run whatever version you want of a node, so you don't mind people forking nor big players supporting it.

I also thought that way, but an OG from the blocksized wars opened my eyes to one issue: if someone has a lot of Bitcoin, they have a lot of ammo to shoot during a fork situation.

Imagine this:

You can continue imagining.

So, I guess, what would make me lose my conviction is watching almost everyone in Bitcoin using large, state capturable custodians.

Or just more generally, people being submissive cowards.

My original hang-up was the possibility of some new bitcoin+, that was basically identical to bitcoin except for having one clear advantage.

To me, the clearest shortcoming of bitcoin is that there's no tangible specie that people can use in emergencies that knock out network access. If something rolled out that could do everything bitcoin can do, with no additional downsides, but also functioned in those situations, that would shake my conviction.

I still haven't read Micah Warren's book on Bitcoin's game theory, which I understand he found problematic and sold his stack as a result. Once I have, I may be better able to answer this question.

Hack. If a coordinated global effort from governments to ban bitcoin was successful. If bitcoiners stopped caring about freedom and sound money, adoption, layer 2 development and only cared about getting rich in fiat terms. If a fork that inflates supply wins out. If the fee and block subsidy prove to be insufficient in the future to secure the network and a consensus is not reached to solve the issue.

I am sure I could come up with a few more. I am not suggesting these are likely by any means but they are some things that would at least cause me to reassess my thesis.

Mining centralization is still top of mind for me. It's real, it's happening, and it is not accounted for in the code or game theory. In the past, some miners have simply chosen out of conscience to refrain from growing too large.

The argument that "they won't get too big because that will ruin faith in the system and devalue the currency they get paid in" is weak.

Bitcoin is already more political than it should be (and I don't mean concerned with national politics). We give duplicitous talking heads too much power and without taxes they extract rent in sneaky ways - pay for play and organizations that increasingly bias toward surveilling and stealing IP and credit, enriching their friends and investments.

Seeing it from the inside has already changed my conviction in bitcoin's social layer. The protocol can cope with some degree of corruption, but I'm concerned about what happens if such power grabs escalate and remain unchecked.

The worst thing would be CBDCs being launched in a major world currency before Bitcoin can monetises as a medium of exchange.

The political powers could then impose a ban on Bitcoin and shut down any transaction in CBDC money who they find or suspect of dealing in Bitcoin or have anything to do with bitcoin.

Bitcoin as a store of value would then be blocked. Even if we later try to build the system needed for Bitcoin to become a general medium of exchange, it could be prevented from taking off.

I guess if… Satoshi nakamoto was really central intelligence And NSA would have facilitated the sha 256 as in a collab.. And it turned out to really be a psy-op to finance the black budget.. Then i would sell… Or not..

i would lose some conviction if the number of people who had confidence in the success of humanity started dwindling rapidly. thankfully, we are accelerating in the right direction, i think. as i think, so i feel, so i act.

If the major banks/government went back on a gold standard and began to live within their means.

That would change my outlook on the purchasing power of bitcoin but it would still have censorship resistance.

The other would be centralization of mining over a sustained time and those powers successfully censoring transactions.

If the price plunged below the power law trajectory that might shake my conviction. Otherwise I’m chill and don’t worry about it.

There are already aspects of the ecosystem that are not good for Bitcoin. In my view, the monopoly, or the technology moat, that Bitmain has achieved is bad for Bitcoin. They have 90% market share of the ASICs that run Bitcoin mining ops. And they operate Antpool, the single largest mining pool. They have shown deep conflicts of interest, literally crippling the ASICs they sell to everyone else except their own operations, which they fought hard not to patch, but were ultimately forced to patch after Braiins revealad their ASICBoost deception. They also directly operate or indirectly have major influence over BTC.com another huge mining pool and ViaBTC is also largely associated with Bitmain.

Every aspect of Bitcoin was designed to be decentralized for it's long term survival and success. History has shown over and over again, that centralization inevitably leads to corruption and debasement.

Block is working on 2 or 3 nm ASICs and announced their intention to open source their designs and plans. This is a positive step. There are other semiconductor manufacturers trying to dethrone Bitmain overwhelming position and try to grab share: NVIDIA, Samsung, Intel, Bitfury, MicroBT, and others. The ones that open source their designs for the benefit of the ecosystem have the right mindset.

The fundamentals are laws. I can't change my conviction in bitcoin fundamentals the same way I can't change my conviction on the laws of thermodynamics. Then it comes the implementation, which is as fragile as the community behind it. So if the community ever dwindles, my conviction will as much (again, on this specific implementation of the fundamentals, which is now bitcoin).

Theoretically, the loss of decentralization! If Bitcoin ever becomes too centralized due to mining concentration or control by a few large entities, it will move away from the core principle of decentralization. And a loss of decentralization will take with it trust in Bitcoin as a bastion of an independently sovereign democratic payment system.

I would say it taking the digital gold narrative and becoming gold standard 2.0

Unfortunately I see many things leading that way, but there is so much good work that is making it more of a payments avenue. Circular economies inspire me, spot etfs do the exact opposite.

responsible / minimized monetary policy and bipartisan protection of physical cash / the right to private commerce at least in my country. that would be the starting point.

Bitcoin could be used by elites only with plebs having no access.

If they managed to permanently censor a transaction or reverse a particular controversial transaction - large theft or something.

Absolutely nothing. Even if there is only one node left with a copy of the blockchain ledger, it's a seed to start over in case of a black swan like aliens landing and killing most of us etc. There will always be resitsance movement that fight.

Satoshi is a 3 letter agency, SHA 256 broken and is exploited Our 99.99999999% up time crashes The fed comes to my door…. Um nope lost them already in a boating accident.

Noone should change conviction for Bitcoin!

The fungibility issue needs to be completely solved. Half-baked solutions and quick band-aids won't cut it. The rest is going great.

Life issues always bring doubt into your life.

Increase supply or lack of finite

I don't have any answer but I would like to stick to a classic one. I wouldn't touch my stack for selling until I need it badly for a purpose much stronger than Bitcoin.

I don't have a concrete answers since I know there isn't one authority that "shut off the internet" and it seems we are passed a 51% attack. I don't know how it can fail. Seems like it has already succeeded. If somehow the limited supply or security of Bitcoin is compromised, I will let go of it. Just don't see that happening. It's always what you don't know though that gets you. 🤷‍♂️

Think of all the qualities of money and see if you can come up with any that is lacking in Bitcoin.

✓ Digital scarcity ✓ Timechain ✓ Decentralized ✓ Global ✓ Energy ✓ Self-custody ✓ Censorship-resistant ✓ Store of value ✓ Medium of exchange ✓ Unit of account ✓ and many more use cases.

We are yet to see the full potential of Bitcoin at work. First, let there be Hyperbicoinization!

Whatever that will make me change my conviction in Bitcoin has to be better than bitcoin in every aspect the market considers VALUABLE.

If someone on HN told me it uses a lot of energy