comparing Bitcoin to a new country's currency

[franklin2058]

Bitcoin is like a currency of a new country. People who hold Bitcoin are like the citizens of this new country.

Bitcoin developers can (also need miners) change the new currency's issuance.

The top developers used to be Satoshi, then it changes into Gavin, then it changes to Wladimir (https://github.com/orgs/bitcoin/people).

My question is how can we check the power of Wladimir? Is there some voting process like the election of US president?

Wladimir maybe like a kind emperor, what if Wladimir gives the power to some bad guy who work with the miners to increase the block reward (and hence increase the total bitcoin supply)?

Remember today mining pool is highly concentrated and therefore controlled by very few people.

Don't tell me something never happen, remember block reward is just a parameter in the code. In financial word, anything can happen without proper checks.

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[joniboini]

gives the power to some bad guy who work with the miners to increase the block reward (and hence increase the total bitcoin supply)?

You can check the code. Everybody will realize by seconds when things like that happen. After that, community can easily 'fork' a new chain, leaving the 'magical increase' worthless.

[Darker45]

I don't think Bitcoin is comparable to a country in the sense that a country has a central power vested on a central authority which is the leader. Bitcoin does not have a central seat of power nor a leader. It does not have a central server either. There is nothing or no one who has the sole power to dictate over which path Bitcoin would take. There is nothing or no one that could be shut down or held hostage in exchange of a change in Bitcoin protocol.

Wladimir is never like a leader of a certain country. Although he is the main man behind the most used Bitcoin software, that does not mean he has the lone capacity to change the Bitcoin protocol. And there are many Bitcoin softwares from which every Bitcoin user has the freedom to choose. And so Wladimir does not control Bitcoin at all. Bitcoin's control is in the hands of all Bitcoin users all over the world. Bitcoin operates on a consensus.

[gentlemand]

People who hold Bitcoin are like the citizens of this new country.

No they're not. They're immigrants which is a much more powerful status. They have chosen to be here. They have a vested interest in keeping it honest and healthy and contributing to it. They have the option of going home if they don't like it.

When a 'country' is entirely made up of passionate volunteers then the usual stuff pulled by the leadership will get swatted flat in seconds, or if it goes that wrong they'll simply migrate again leaving the bad actors with nothing.

[NeuroticFish]

anything can happen without proper checks.

Some may use a new bad code without checking, but some will surely check it first (at least the changes) and if something is fishy, they'll "sound the alarm". And the community / consensus will be necessary for such a change, else the bad actors will be forced into a worthless fork.

Remember today mining pool is highly concentrated and therefore controlled by very few people.

I don't know if you know/remember the SegWit and SegWit2x days. Those have shown that even good changes are hard to be added if they're controversial and the bad changes will be surely rejected and the mining pools are not as strong as you want to believe.

[dothebeats]

My question is how can we check the power of Wladimir? Is there some voting process like the election of US president?

AFAIK being the top D for bitcoin does not undergo any voting process. It simply is entrusted by the previous top D to a new person he sees fit to continue on working with the code. These guys are not regularly compensated and are rarely funded; they only rely to donations and whatnot so I don't think there's much power into being the top developer of bitcoin. You are simply known for your knowledge and ability to do changes on the code for its betterment, and even if you turn out to be a nefarious being, the code is open-source, and people can easily opt for a fork should there be any malicious part in the code that you have uploaded.

Wladimir maybe like a kind emperor, what if Wladimir gives the power to some bad guy who work with the miners to increase the block reward (and hence increase the total bitcoin supply)?
Remember today mining pool is highly concentrated and therefore controlled by very few people.

That wouldn't happen. Substantial changes in the code undergoes a voting process, or a consensus as it is officially called. Also, even though miners are hugely concentrated in China, they do not belong to a single entity, and you need more than 90% of the whole hashing power of the network in order to impose changes thoroughly. Even then, you would not be sure that everyone would follow your version of bitcoin. Heck, it took a good year before blockchain.info implemented bech32 searches in its own service...

Don't tell me something never happen, remember block reward is just a parameter in the code. In financial word, anything can happen without proper checks.

Unfortunately (lol), the code is regularly checked by thousands of people every single day. I'm not saying that it would never happen, but it really wouldn't.

[Tasrifhossain]

In my opinion, one of the main reasons for Bitcoin's relationship with independence is that it is seen that Bitcoin is not controlled by any individual or centralized company, it is completely independent by anyoneNot regulated, and many people may think that all kinds of software companies that have the privilege of using Bitcoin for software may have controlled a lot of Bitcoin, but that is not entirely trueBecause the protocol through which Bitcoin is created is not actually controlled by any centralized organization or any one person, it is spread globally, and for this reason it is said that Bitcoin is somehowCannot be controlled by a central organization

[RealMalatesta]

When Satoshi Nakamoto stepped down we did not do anything like voting, same thing with the next person. So, there is nothing like that, you are not voting. Satoshi said he had other things to do so he handed everything over to others and left.

Other people will do the same when they don’t want to continue. And for your main concern which is about control being given to some bad guy, when such an arise the community will always find a way to handle it. Such situations are the reasons there used to be a fork. Bitcoin is not really owned by anyone, the whole community decides what happens.

[sheenshane]

It might be Bitcoin can provide the 100% transparency to the point that you alone can check the code. Everyone can check the codes anyways. We can't say that bitcoin can be compared to a new country's currency. Because compared to the new country's currency, Bitcoin is more decentralized. Wladimir has nothing to do with a block reward. But I wonder how do they do their election, as well. Or what are the qualifications they have for a person to become the developer of bitcoin?

It seems like Wladimir is a very highly influential person. His username/code sounds like Russia's President's first name as well. There might be something behind regarding that matter. Anyway, just my only thought.

[Pffrt]

People who hold Bitcoin are like the citizens of this new country.

Not true. Most of the people don't care if Bitcoin is a currency or not. They only care about the ROI, means for them Bitcoin is an investment system where they can earn passive income. So, holders don't mean they objectively holding it as a currency. Very few people are using Bitcoin and with this limited usage, we can't call it a currency.

[sana54210]

nope that is too far to reality mate because New Country currency requires this to be used by their people and they have no choice,it must be implemented while in Bitcoin we have freedom,we can Use Bitcoin anytime we want(as long as available in that country)but we can also use other currency if we are not satisfy with the performance of Bitcoin.so that is incomparable mate.

This might perhaps not be incomparable if ever there is a whole country who has bitcoins as their national currency to support their monetary functions.

This would even give birth to more advanced and futuristic generation where bitcoins could be transferred normally without worrying about the transaction fees and the confirmation time. Technology has driven us to a greater future so why could we not expect the same with bitcoins in coming few years. Characteristics of bitcoins won't be changed even if they are been accepted by a whole new nation.

I am really excited to watch the emergence of any such country. Yet there are a number of places which have no government and are not even considered as a part of any country and such places could easily generate their own individual nation with the help of bitcoins.

[fullhdpixel]

This is really a nice concept. We could treat bitcoins as a currency of the so called decentralized country. Bitcoins can serve as a national currency in this newly generated country but how can bitcoin developers actually change the new currency's issuance as we all know that the code for bitcoin is already been implemented by satoshi.

There is no real identity of satoshi so we can never know the real identity of Gavin or Wladimir. Maybe these 3 are one same individual in real world who keeps on changing identities. Also it is not possible for any of the above 3 mentioned personalities to give the power to any other individual. Bitcoins can't be changed which would also not allow us to change the total supply of bitcoins.

[hatshepsut93]

Bitcoin doesn't have an autoupdate feature like many of the other (especially centralized) software do - so for starters, if devs will go rogue and release a malicious version, the community will simply not accept it. Bitcoin users generally don't rush to upgrade their nodes asap, it's a pretty long process. And even if someone gets careless and updates their node without reviewing the code, they can always downgrade it. This is why decentralization of nodes is important - nodes are the most powerful entity in Bitcoin, both miners and developers don't have full control over Bitcoin.

[adzino]

What do you mean by bitcoin developers change the new currency's issuance? You probably don't have proper understanding on how bitcoin works. If any changes take place in the protocol of the network, a fork takes place and two different coins are created. This does not mean that the developers issued a new currency.
You are probably thinking those peoples name you mentioned controls everything in the market which isn't true.