Bitcoin Forum

A Western-type Democracy is associated with liberal principles (freedom of movement, freedom of capital etc.)

BTC is kinda the same... you're free to transact as you wish (within BTC's mainnet rules) and there's an expectation of zero censorship.

The problem with Western-type Democracy is that it's very easy to hijack it: you can flood it with illegal immigrants (see: USA/Europe) and nobody can do anything about it.

BTC is kinda the same... you can flood the network with monkey jpegs and nobody can do anything about it, because there's this expectation of zero censorship.

Trying to censor transactions feels like adopting totalitarian regimes' principles, even if it's for a good purpose (banning Ordinals/NFTs).

Neither West, nor BTC are perfect, that's pretty much obvious to everyone.

I'm afraid some people might be right that there's a conspiracy going on (BlackRock might be trying to flood the network before ETF's approval with ORDI/NFTs raising the fees to absurd levels).

No, I don't have any proof, it's just a thought and I sincerely hope I'm wrong, because if I'm right, then it doesn't sound too good for Bitcoin's future (they will push everyone to custodial solutions with KYC, since very few people will be able to open Lightning channels).

Back in May I had written a FB post about how in the future you will have to pay $1000* for an on-chain transaction. BTC mainnet will basically become a settlement network for banks. The Average Joe will be forced to use CEX or Lightning (if he's lucky enough to have a channel already).

* this could also happen if BTC is worth millions of dollars one day

CBDC will bring back the Gold standard. CBDC will be backed by BTC.

Do I have a solution in mind that doesn't have drawbacks? No, I don't. Both big blocks and Lightning have serious drawbacks.

Just thought I'd make a West/BTC analogy... you don't have to attack me for it. This isn't a thread to discuss illegal immigration.

You definitely can't distinguish between Bitcoin and Altcoins (Cryptocurrency), there is no monkey jpegs in BTC even tho Bitcoin blockchain can be used to make NFT, but most of the time it was used for .btc domain. Bitcoin is very different with any democracy that exist today, most of the democracy nowadays are still very centralized all the policies executed and made by central entity, this means that all the policies need to secure the interest of the entity, while bitcoin is ture decentralized everything that is happened and is going to happened is because the market and community. What you are describing is centralized altcoin and we know most of the bitcoin enthusiast is against that centralization used of blockchain

You definitely cannot understand the point of this thread...

What do they gain from raising the fees?

I think a simple explanation is that people are paying fees for ordinals and such because they either hope to make profitable trades, or because they are rich crypto investors who can afford to burn money on collectibles.

And I doubt that nfts can drive the fees up to $1,000 but they can certainly drive it to $5-40 for short periods of time, and that's already highly annoying. We talk so much about Bitcoin helping the economies of poor countries and banking the unbanked, well good luck convincing them that they have to pay their daily salary for a single transaction fee.

They make the Bitcoin network less affordable for poor people as you said, so in a sense they will be forced to use custodial services (with KYC). Kinda like CBDC.

my view,
bitcoin 2009-2013 was western liberal democracy
but dev politics and business sponsorships got in the way after 2013 and bitcoin has changed

I think it's still a Western liberal democracy, unless censorship becomes the norm in every pool.

USER nodes dont get a vote no more.. thanks to "backward compatibility"
its now economic nodes(services and exchanges) and core devs that sway pools to do things

the github of bitcoin clients was more open to people making personal clients not branded "core".. but now they want to moderate and control the core github and call anything not core a cheap knock off/fraud

things have changed

I think the westerners have come to the standpoint that what they actually need is freedom and they do need it in the area of finance most especialy as the government is more focused on draining them financially.

However, they can not totally enjoy freedom as the government still enact policies that strangulates whatever approach they take towards their freedom.

Bitcoin is the best form of democracy to the global technology space and most importantly the financial space but the west is still trying to frustrate it.

That's on paper and what the advertisement says. But in reality and in actual definition democracy is all about brainwash. Those who invented it define democracy as "convincing masses that the dog shit they're eating tastes like candy".

If you look at the societies with "democracy", there is always an unchanging regime that nobody voted for (eg. they call it deep state in US to make it sound like a conspiracy theory) and has full control of everything behind the scene and pulls all the strings.
The most important part and parcel of democracy is the two sides that look like they are against each other (red and blue) and their purpose is to keep the the regime intact.
It works like this: one side wins the election (eg. democrats) and takes a shit on the country (on economy, health care, pensions, etc.) and the other side (republicans) attract the support of the angry people by redirecting all the blame on the first side (democrats) instead of the regime itself. Then in the next election they win instead and take control of the country to do the same exact shit as the first party and this time the first party (democrats) blames those in office and attracts support creating an endless cycle until people rise up and start a regime change!

In a democracy all types of freedom are also defined as whatever the regime likes. For example in "liberal economy" they tell you that you are free to do whatever you like with your capital but in reality it means you can do whatever the regime likes. Otherwise you can be Blackrock or MSCI and want to be free to take your capital to China and invest in their rapidly growing economy but since the regime doesn't like that they will prevents you and even takes you to court threatening to shut you down.

We do not have that in Bitcoin, the "constitution" which is the consensus rules don't change and people don't vote on who enforces those rules periodically (like 4 years) and the power is not in the hands of a centralized entity.
Although there are traces of the same brainwash seen in the community.

This is the proof of what I said about brainwash!

I don't know when and how a small portion of the community started referring to preventing exploit as censorship! What's worse is that we've been doing it for as long as Bitcoin existed. We've been preventing a lot of different ways people can easily spam the chain, there is a long list of the in standard rules, and yet this small number of people are excluding the most recent exploit Ordinals attack is using and refers to any effort at preventing it as "censorship"!!!

Censorship is defined as preventing anyone from using this peer-to-peer cash system to send money to anyone they like. It is NOT defined as preventing people from abusing the system and exploiting the protocol to turn Bitcoin into a cloud storage.

I disagree. I don't think this can ever happen (fees go up and remain up) because it would kill bitcoin and it will be replaced by something else that does not have the same problems (like being easy to be exploited by something like Ordinals and be attacked without the community lifting a finger to prevent it).

Fees can always be adjusted and instead of 1 sat/vb being minimum we could have 1 sat/100vb being the minimum rate.

CBDC will be centralized and be considered a shitcoin like Tether is in the decentralized community. Regardless of what it is backed by.

How did you come up to this conclusion? Do you have any insider information from a central bank, that is willing to adopt BTC?
CBDCs will be backed by nothing and no big central bank in the world will start buying BTC with the sole purpose of using it as a reserve asset.
Western democracies are built around order and law, not around freedom. The only difference between democracies and dictatorships are that the governments elected by the people should also abide by the law, while the dictators are above the law.
I can't say anything about your conspiracy theory regarding the Blackrock Bitcoin ETF and the ordinals clogging the blockchain and pumping the transaction fees up. I don't have any proof about this weird theory.

An interesting analogy that the OP mentioned is freedom, but I feel this way about freedom in the crypto space, where we think about our personal rights being unchecked but still not avoiding them being constrained by the legal corridor as Bitcoin increasingly develops. There will need to be separate regulations to link it with social life, or vice versa, society must take its course of action, and that will certainly cause conflicts.

We all want freedom, even Western countries talk a lot about this idea, but the reality is that perfection is not realistic when people themselves have their own conflicts. Incidentally, when I first listened to the podcast again, it was about the economic system as well as the control of a country, perhaps ideally this is very compelling to aim for, but the way it works is still subject to limitations on cognitive bias.

Thanks for raising these profound points, in fact I am of the opinion that both Bitcoin and Western-style democracy fail to provide true freedom.

Both are similar in terms of wonderful theoretical principles that grant freedom, but on the ground there is no real freedom.

Western countries that claim to enjoy liberal principles (freedom of movement, freedom of capital, etc.) exercise severe control over their citizens through banks and hidden central control and reject any system outside this central authoritarian system (which claims liberalism and calls for freedom), and for this reason they fight Bitcoin.

As for Bitcoin, it has also unfortunately failed to grant true freedom and decentralization in a realistic manner because we were unable to get rid of the censorship imposed by a small group controlling the Bitcoin network, and we were also unable to get rid of the censorship imposed by governments on freedoms, and the greatest evidence of that is what is happening now in the forum after the decision to ban Mixers campaigns because they oppose government policy.

All the scenarios you put forward for Bitcoin scalability problem are far from the realistic scenario. It is true that Bitcoin transaction fees are currently high, but the blocks are almost full and confirmation times are instantaneous for large transactions. If you want to send $1,000 or more, Bitcoin fees are low (unless the number of inputs are Extremely large)
There are many suggestions for solutions to this problem and for small transactions, in which case you may not have to pay a lot of fees, such as the lightning network and side networks.

Any thing that becomes powerful will become an interest of the powerful people.

Bitcoin became popular.  So it became an interest of the powerful and Wealthy.  I was hoping Bitcoin would not become what it is today but the more power it gains the less likely it will offer the same freedom it once did.

See Micro Strategy.  Every body is cheering them for purchasing so many Bitcoin.  Currently Micro Strategy owns around 1 percent of the Bitcoin supply.  We cheer them for purchasing Bitcoin but we forget they are a business, Saylor is a businessman and one day this could turn into a catastrophe.  We were supposed to cheer for Decentralization.  Not for the Rich using Bitcoin as a tool to gain further power.

They own 1 percent which is already a LOT.  Imagine how many other institutions and corporations are buying Bitcoin too.  If Bitcoin was meant to offer a refuge from the Rich and some sort of equilibrum between the Rich and the Poor.  Now Bitcoin is only another asset and method of the Wealthy to gain more wealth and for the Poor to become more Poor.

This is unfortunate but I guess we have to accept our fate.  Bitcoin has changed like franky1 said. 

Yes, Bitcoin and democracy both live on freedom and little or no censorship, but lets not make things too easy. The large number of "monkey jpegs," which is a clever code word for small trades, is a problem, but it can be solved. Thats the same as saying democracy fails because of a few bad decisions about policy.

Bitcoin's resilience is its core strength. Even though network overflow or BlackRock-style plots are possible, the fact that it is decentralized makes it hard to manipulate. Its not perfect, no; its a work in progress. As for the $1000 transaction fee scenario, its speculative, but it underscores the importance of solutions like Lightning Network, despite its flaws.

And CBDCs backed by Bitcoin? Interesting, but lets face it: CBDCs are the exact opposite of what Bitcoin stands for: they are not controlled by a central authority. They're, frankly, trash. Bitcoin is the best at what it does because it is on the way to becoming the best answer.

OP what do you think, is it ironic is it that the governments now who are most against Bitcoin and try to control Bitcoin are all Western-type Democracies? :)

China banned Bitcoin yes but they didn't go try to hunt people down and seize their businesses etc.

US and UK are actively chasing down Bitcoin users. Weird right?

I don't think we have any democracies that have zero censorship, surveillance, restrictions etc. Even strong Western democracies (and the USA isn't among them, it's usually classified as a flawed democracy) have their issues and restrictions (including quotas of immigrants they accept). If there's some censorship, it doesn't automatically mean that it's getting totalitarian. There's a very wide spectrum between a full democracy and a totalitarian regime.
I'd support some restrictions on Bitcoin which are meant to protect it from crazy fee spikes like the one we're currently experiencing, as long as it's actually doable. Let's not forget that transaction fees jumped from time to time in the past, well before Ordinals and stuff.

I'm glad I got some pretty thoughtful responses.

Disagreement is always welcome, as long as there's civil discourse. :)

If everyone who bought Bitcoin are understand with the purpose of Bitcoin was created, we can combat against the centralization. Unfortunately most people who have Bitcoin are don't care with that, they don't mind to use CEX to buy and hold their coins.

As the government have a power and only the minority are against about the centralization, for sure we already lose before the war begin.

microstrategy has sponsored core devs to aid in the crappy subnetwork LN development. taking core devs away from actually working on bitcoin for bitcoin utility
DCG also sponsored core devs to aid in doing things that make bitcoin more annoying to use just to promote off chain services..

their game plan is to make bitcoin annoying and expensive to transact, so that they can take small % fee's via middlemen services

then we get the affiliate/sig spammer trolls screaming "dont allow more transactions per block, everyone should just pay more fees" all playing into the roadmap where the "solution" is not proper consensus utilised code to enforce rules of clean fit-for-purpose bitcoin use on bitcoin. but "solution: move over to this other network that will fulfil your dreams"

Throughout history, people have often attempted to portray their actions as "good" when they're really committing acts of unspeakable evil.  Everyone likes to believe they're the good guys.  Everyone thinks they have the moral high-ground.  And then they use that to justify what they're doing.  Even when it's wrong.

When it comes to immigration, not everyone sees attempts to reduce it as "a good purpose".  Persecution of those who are different to you is harmful.  The more you try to restrict individual freedom to persecute others, the more you invariably cause suffering and anguish to innocent people.  I'm personally of the view that most people who dislike immigration are simply small-minded and selfish.  And I'll oppose them at every opportunity.

Learn how to co-exist peacefully.

But yeah, I can definitely see parallels between the type of people who praise Trump's idiotic "build a wall" mentality and the UK's current, vile "stop the boats" rhetoric with those who are seeking to block ordinals.  It starts exactly the same way.  Act as though something isn't "worthy" or "deserving" of being there and then ask that everyone agrees to restrict individual freedom to deny access to "undesirables".

It's like the blockchain equivalent of racism and xenophobia.

Also, Bitcoin is undoubtedly a Meritocracy.  Only the best code is selected and used, regardless of its source of origin.  It's not a Democracy.  It's better than that.

Perhaps a constitutional republic.  Where the constitution is the code.  A pure democracy is fiat where a majority of the people are free to enslave a portion (e.g. the democrats in the old US south), or to take a percentage of everyone's money via inflation.

You should fear an unlimited democracy.

I am sure that Bitcoin will face many challenges and perhaps the conspiracy theorists are right (lol, that would be a first), but I am sure that Bitcoin will endure.

If anyone could manipulate Bitcoin as easily as conspiracy theorists claim, then we would have seen proof of successful attempts already. What exactly is the point in waiting and hoping that BTC reaches 1 million before people notice the exploitable flaw? We will just need to find a workaround and improve Bitcoin for any upcoming challenges.

Also, you claim that western democracies can be easily hijacked. Then tell me why most undemocratic countries are such shitholes while most democratic countries flourish? Sure, democracy is not perfect and it has its flaws, but I have yet to see evidence of a better system.

Bitcoin used to be a western like democracy where liberal values used to be valued. Now it's very different. Now people are seen the negative sides of the decentralized ecosystem. As you have correctly mentioned, anyone can flood the network with monkey jpgs and no one can do anything about it.

However the Bitcoin developers are now planning to remove ordinals permanently. So too much freedom is also not good. Somewhere a central control is also needed to remove the negativity from a certain thing.

The blackrock thing you said, may become a hot topic amongst the conspiracy theorerists.

I've seen one Bitcoin developer saying this.  One who, put mildly, is often slightly out of kilter with what a majority of devs are thinking.  Who are the other devs endorsing this?  You're making it sound as though it's already a unanimous decision and I'm not sure that's accurate.
  

That is not negative side of decentralization, that is more like negative side of centralization.

I don't want to suggest that bitcoin core is centralized but there is definitely a flaw here.
I just said this in another topic (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5476758.msg63310276#msg63310276), we know that part of the community wants to reject these spam transactions but they cannot do that simply because they are not developers and bitcoin core developers have refused to implement the option that would give them the choice to reject the "monkey jpgs".

Removal requires roll back which is impossible and will never happen. Permanent invalidation (not removal) requires another fork to change consensus rules which is not even discussed as far as I can tell. The only thing discussed is their rejections through policy rules.

proof core devs are politicians


if doomad admits that changes to bitcoin need core dev decision then core are centralised
you can more then just suggest it.. its a known fact since the REKT days that core are the defacto only source reference client.. they chose the name Core for a reason

That's what Satoshi did himself by not providing a detailed documentation of the protocol in a paper like other protocols. He created a client and a source code that defined the protocol hence it became the "reference implementation".

It is not necessarily a bad thing either. The problem is when they don't or won't implement certain "features" (like option to reject Ordinals or option to sign a message from SegWit address) and there is nobody else doing it either.

Hmm, I'm interested in knowing more, because it's rare when we discuss such topics, I can relate a few of the points but for the whole idea, I would like to know more, a more simple brief explanation.

For the point on the network fees and affordance of network for poor people, I've gone through some of the comments from a few seniors expressing that no one forcing you, if you want top-tier security you need to pay the top-tier fees, you cant expect the same level of security from the cheaper network. In the end, no one I forcing which directly proves there's really no perfect solution but still we have time, and maybe in the near future the whole story will take a 360 flip, who knows? This is the beginning not the interval haha.

The Western Democracy is always a liberal democracy in which citizens are free to practice the real democratic principles. And to some extent what you have said is the truth with Bitcoin, the Western Democracy has the element of decentralization which Bitcoin was build upon and with the liberality ordinals have the access to the Blockchain and congested the net and the transaction fee was very high and the best way to do and will make the transaction fee okay for small scale businesses and poor investors to access their funds. Many of the investors do not know how to use the lighting network.

The funny thing is that the Western democracies you are calling liberalism, They are the ones who are going to start here and bring Bitcoin under the control of the a central.  Which you have already mentioned, be it blackrock or ETF approval process. They want to control Bitcoin ultimately, but from my own point of view, it is a funny thing because ultimately they cannot control Bitcoin they can only control Bitcoin users by pushing its users towards KYC verification. I hope this doesn't happen in the future even though they are working on it. But I think the clear-headed users may use Bitcoin that way the purpose for which Bitcoin was invented.
I would also like to say that these activities show how western democratic liberalism is, their democracy is only a showoff, and there is nothing to say about their democracy inside.

Yes the concept is pretty similar if we see the context. Bitcoins provide you complete access to your finances and here you can invest it without relying on any third party. Hence investing in Bitcoins have many benefits and advantages that is being provided by the western sides. Hence, the countries which don’t follow these types of policies are banning Bitcoins, or not legalising it. Nevertheless, we should not compare these valuable Bitcoins with anything else. Let’s enjoy this awesome creation.

It is possible to transfer bitcoins from one exchange account to another exchange account with a relatively low fee, but for those of us who use mobile wallets, there is no such opportunity. Transferring BTC from mobile wallet to exchange wallet will cost me $50 per transfer for each transfer. If I am transferring $100 to $200 and if I have to pay $50 fee to transfer $100 to $200 then how do I transfer my BTC with this extra transaction fee. While not a problem for big traders, it is a big problem for small members like us.

If Bitcoin is called democracy, I totally agree. Because bitcoin does have an element of freedom for whoever owns it (decentralized). However, if bitcoin is mentioned or equated with western democracy, I think I would disagree more. The reason is, the democratic systems that exist in countries like the West are still not as free as Bitcoin's decentralized system. So I think your opinion is a little inaccurate.

nooo

within a week of bitcoin(genesis block) actually being released people were using their own node on their own computer, adding lines of code and compiling their node on their computer and when if didnt break or stall they then published the bug fix or feature, which others could then add into their own node.. this occured alot even into 2010

these days core devs want stuff they like added to core then release core to the community.. a whole different paradigm

core wanted people to play with their own code/node edits on testnets and forked chains(altcoins) and see how things work or who shows interest before getting into cores code.. heck they even done it themselves in their blockstream stuff
they didnt want lots of random nodes with different codebases on the bitcoin network used by parts of the bitcoin community, as they said (inferring  they are the gods) they dont want to be reviewing other peoples nodes to ensure they were fit to run on the bitcoin network

and anyone promoting a non core node that offers new features not offered by core, get treated as an opposition and REKT campaigns begin(unless endorsed by core dev group)

All contributing to the same project hosted on Sourceforge not separate ones.

That is how things should always work! Bitcoin is too sensitive to just add any code to it without sufficient testing.

Again that is exactly Satoshi's view on the matter (last paragraph) (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=195.msg1611#msg1611), although I don't agree with it. Saying it is just the "evil core devs" who think this way is dishonest.

There is a difference between an implementation of Bitcoin protocol and another implementation trying a hostile takeover that is trying to force a major change like a hard fork to arbitrarily change block size at any time as the miner wished (eg. bitcoin unlimited, bitcoin classic, bitcoin cash, ...).

theres a big difference between non core dev people (the community) proposing not yet activated features.. vs whats actually activated as the current ruleset

core treat even proposing non activated stuff outside of cores moderation. as a oppositional attack
core however want to add new feature as current ruleset without needing users(the community) becoming ready in majority for it

notice the differences in the paradigms

..
core want to change the network parameters before user nodes have upgraded to comply to understand the new rules
but core dont want people even using other brands before even other brands have activated their features that could in future change the network away from the core roadmap

Even if this was true, how would BlackRock benefit from large fees, immediately after doing this? They are not miners, they are asset managers.

In fact I strongly think that most people in BlackRock do not even know how to make an Ordinal.

Although you said there is a risk of it becoming a "settlement network for banks", to be honest, is there any bank interested in using Bitcoin for that? Jamie Dimon just said he would like to close Bitcoin down if he could.

i dont think ordinals is a black rock conspiracy..
if anything its the corporations of subnetwork adoration conspiracy.. all those sponsors into developers to make gateways to subnetworks.. so that middlemen/payment processors(routers) of subnetworks can get fee's is where the sponsors will get their ROI
so pushing bitcoins fee's up is a promotion of subnetworks

those corporations know they cant get middle men fee's from bitcoin network so they have to make bitcoin network a headache for users. to get fee's elsewhere

they didnt afterall sponsor devs out of altruistic charity

and yes ordinals inventor was a chaincodelabs guy and we can all follow the money back and look at the 'inventions' they made to see the path they intend

other funding of the other 'blockstream' devs and following their roadmap shows the path they intend

I've explained it:

BlackRock can hire BTC/blockchain experts to flood the network with NFTs, it's not that hard... then they can sell BTC IOU on their own CEX platform with KYC requirements.

Regarding Jamie Dimon, don't believe him, he's playing reverse psychology to buy cheap BTC.

"Hey! I get what you're saying about Bitcoin feeling like a Western-type democracy with its decentralized vibe. It's kinda like everyone having a say, right? But, let's not forget it's more about money and tech than running a country. Still, interesting parallels for sure! 🚀💸 #CryptoDemocracy"