Can miners "freeze" bitcoin addresses?

[odolvlobo]

It's not about percentage. It's about excluding tx's from "all" tx pools. That's the only way.
Even if all of the miners exclude spesific address's tx's then those people can edit their mining pools & tx pools to accept only those tx's to create block. If they're lucky enough they'll create block and their tx's will be on the chain.

In your scenario, the txs may be put in a block, but the block will be rejected by other miners and orphaned.

How will they orphan it? if it's a block that has all requirements of network, miners can not reject it.
Also it's not their choice to make a block orphan.

They certainly can reject it. If they don't consider the block to be valid because it contains an invalid transaction (the blacklisted one), they continue the chain from a different block and that one is orphaned.

If they want to reject & orphan it they have to find a block with same height at the same time which is acceptable by the network.

That is not correct. Miners don't have to continue from the first block that is propagated. Each miner is free to choose which block to continue from. The choice is not dictated by any authority or any rule, but a miner is motivated to conform to the consensus. In your scenario, the mining consensus is that certain addresses are blacklisted. If anyone propagates an invalid (according to the consensus) block, it is rejected by miners that follow the consensus and it will never be part of the longest chain.

[spazzdla]

THIS RIGHT HERE is why if call yourself a Bitcoiner and you are not mining YOU ARE LYING TO YOURSELF.  It's like trying to guard a vault with a toy gun..

[R2D221]

THIS RIGHT HERE is why if call yourself a Bitcoiner and you are not mining YOU ARE LYING TO YOURSELF.  It's like trying to guard a vault with a toy gun..

I assume that you are a miner, then.

[Meuh6879]

If everyone else decides to screw you, they will.

so 50 550 miners screw you ... well, you have a bad day, my friend, that it's sure.   go and buy a lottery ticket in the same day ... 

[Cryddit]

In your scenario, the txs may be put in a block, but the block will be rejected by other miners and orphaned.

How will they orphan it? if it's a block that has all requirements of network, miners can not reject it.
Also it's not their choice to make a block orphan.

It is not their choice to make a block orphan, but it is their choice to mine on the parent block rather than on a block that contains one or more transactions they object to. 

If you have 50%+ of the mining power refusing transactions from some set *AND* refusing to use blocks that have transactions from that set as blocks to mine the next link in the chain from, then the chain not containing those transactions grows faster than any chain that contains those transactions.  Hence orphan blocks/chains. 

[cozk]

Its possible.

Won't happen.

With Bitcoin is "Its possible and CAN happen", with Monero it is impossible.

Monero... its a bigger joke Mooncoin.

[cyrusthegreat]

this will never happen! no one will benefit from it.

[medUSA]

Is it technically possible for miners to "freeze" certain bitcoin addresses by rejecting all transactions to/from a list of addresses?

A miner/pool can choose to include or reject any transactions for the block they are mining. If this miner/pool solved the block and it ended up on the main chain, this miner/pool has deprived the "frozen" address of a new transaction for 1 block. Because the transaction is still in the transaction memory pool, other miners/pools could include that transaction in the block they are mining.

To effectively "freeze" an address, most pools and miners would need to collude together (51% of network hashrate) to mine blocks fast enough, one top of another, to orphan any block mined by non-colluding miners/pools.

[Amph]

this will never happen! no one will benefit from it.

besides a criminal, if criminals had the possibility to controls the network and "freezing address", they would certainly do it, besides they will do a double spend too

[mezzomix]

If 50%+ of miners decide to do something, and they have the programming ability, they can make bitcoin into whatever they want.

Yes, they can create an altcoin!

And the 50%- rest of the miners will be the remaining miners of the Bitcoin network.