Didn't anyone follow the link (
https://petertodd.org/assets/2016-04-21/MIT-ChainAnchor-DRAFT.pdf) to the MIT paper that Todd himself supplied? Suffice it to say, MIT does
not propose a method of "bribing" bitcoin miners. The project is exactly about what it says it is about in the paper's title: "Anonymous Identities for Permissioned Blockchains". I'm a true-blue Bitcoin believer and user since 2011 and think the idea contained in the paper is a very interesting and potentially useful one. There is nothing in it to be afraid of.
An MIT rep involved in the project has posted a badly needed (if far too polite) corrective, at:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/4foatp/mit_chainanchor_bribing_miners_to_regulate_bitcoin/d2bs0tjI must say that reading the comments here and on Reddit has been a disheartening experience. I'm no techie but I knew immediately that Todd was at worst a liar and provocateur and at best an ignorant and panic-stricken simpleton. In either case, he set off a herd-panic because everyone simply took him at his word, like the townsfolk in the James Thurber story who ran screaming because the dam had broken. Only later did they remember that there was no dam. The next day, nobody talked about it.
As for Todd, April 1 is over. He should be banned permanently from Reddit. There is no excuse for what he wrote.
So like a cop at the scene of an accident, I will say:
Move along, folks. It's all over. There's nothing to see here. Move along. Nothing to see here. Move along, folks.