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179 sats \ 1 reply \ @Undisciplined 10h \ on: Bitcoin needs a censor bitcoin
This was a great read.
There's a repeated game element to add on to the end, I think. As censored transactions become more normal and therefor more profitable for potential miners, bitcoin mining itself will become more profitable in places that don't cooperate with the censors. Censorship, or even the realistic prospect of censorship, will induce geographic decentralization of mining.
For now, it sounds like, the pools are basically behaving themselves sufficiently well to not drive hashrate away.
I also thought your point about how "bad" the censorship would need to be was interesting. Depending on what the transactions are being censored for, I'm sure many people will approve of it. Some may even join pools specifically because of what they censor.
This is definitely a topic I need to think through a bit more.
You're right: geography certainly is huge. I probably should have noted the geographic distribution of energy sources as the other major decentralizing pressure in mining. But it's also true that pooling can lessen the effects of geography.
One of the worst case scenarios would be a light, but mostly acted-upon agreement among the top four or five pools to exclude transactions from OFAC-sanctioned addresses coupled with a lackluster outrage from hashers where few of them actually switch pools.
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