What would happen to bitcoin if all bitcoin-related stuff on GitHub got banned?

[DaveF]

Looking at the address given for codeberg it's someones apartment, and with so few projects hosted by it I can see someone running it out of their bedroom so to speak.
Sorcehut does not even give an address that I can find and as @ETFbitcoin also looks to have very few projects.

Being smaller like that can be good for some things, but with the amount of malware projects that pop up on github and sourceforge that they have to keep shutting down Microsoft and Slashdot respectively have to be putting some serious man hours into keeping up with it. It is probably easier for these tiny sites to just say no.....


What I still don't get is why real projects don't just host it themselves. Between GitLab / Gitea  / GitBucket / Gogs and many others you can keep your project in your world and not worry about anyone else.

-Dave

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[NotATether]

With that being said, there are plenty of things that the cryptocurrency community could be doing much better. A lot of the bad reputation that cryptocurrencies have has been earned, but banning innovators who want to innovate is just asinine.

I trust that Github will remain innovative and that the anti-innovative hostile entities will simply stay away from Github (well, at least for now).

Again, people who hate cryptocurrencies just stick the blame of all cryptocurrency failures on developers, when in reality the actual management of failing services is done by businessmen, using code that is not even hosted on open-source repo hosting sites.

This is why all open-source projects have a big capital notice in their license, disclaiming all warranty and liability, because scumbags who run a service down will look for any way to escape from accountability.

The vast majority of OSS devs have no interest in scamming you or running away with your funds, they just want to make good software.

Most open-source crypto projects do not even manage money - they are just supporting infrastructure around the blockchain.

Remember PGP - code is free speech, and nobody can ban it or take it away from people.

PS: Feel free to send me a PM when they re-open that thread. I have a few sucker punches I'd like to make myself.



Edit: I just saw a post there reading this:

I beg to differ with cryptocurrencies in regard to the environmental aspect: Proof-of-work based cryptocurrencies definetly have a bad impact on the environment because of wasted CPU power and hardware, while cryptocurrencies that use Proof-of-stake or some other proof mechanism that doesn't need complex calculations don't have that bad impact. They may have other problems..

I really wish I heard about this 2-3 days ago so I could fire BitcoinCleanup (a site I made) at them. Sourcehut's announcement, and reasons why Codeberg are doing this is wrong, at every level.

But then again, I have no regrets, because I was busy doing real development during that time and not useless bikeshedding or more accurately, flame warring as these guys seem to fancy.

[NotATether]

For those who didn't know, Codeberg closed down their thread last week only to reopen it a few days ago (the reason they closed it, they said, was "media frenzy". I took the time to share my comments about this issue, which I will quote here:

Looks like my watch notifications paid off then.

I intended to comment here, but you locked the thread two days earlier.

Let me make one thing clear here, I do not use Codeberg - this account was made a week ago just to comment here. I am an open-source developer of various projects on Github including software which interaxts with cryptocurrencies: https://github.com/ZenulAbidin

As it stands, I lose nothing by a Codeberg ban on crypto projects. However, other devs who have crypto code on Codeberg have everything to lose, so what I write is is for them, not for me.

Everyone - You know, this thread is called: "Taking a stand against cryptocurrency/blockchain", and it would be more accurate to call it "Taking a stand sgainst cryptocurrency/blockchain scams". Because that's what most of the idea behind this thread seems to be about.

It is quite trivial to get rid of blockchain/cryptocurrency scam projects online - using the Report Abuse button. This particular button has been fantastic on Github for taking down various scam copies of crypto projects. I assume you have such a button already - in that case, half of your problem is already solved.

Now that we have got the scams out of the way, let us deal with your second issue surrounding this topic: Excessive energy use of cryptocurrencies. Incidentially, I am also the creator of https://bitcoincleanup.com (NOT cleanupbitcoin). This is a website I made to challenge Greenpeace's and Chris Larsen's (the Ripple Labs co-founder who donated all that campaign money to Greenpease in the first place) false claims about crypto energy usage. They were claiming that if you "Change the Code", everything would be fine and Bitcoin's energy usage would go down.

Isn't it ironic, a crypto guy making a campaign against crypto. But all that is a different topic.

First of all, some cryptos like Ethereum are using Proof of Stake, which uses no energy, so this is a non-issue for them. You can't say: "Let's ban the projects of all Ethereum dApps on CodeBerg", because as of September - long before SourceHut contemplated any crypto ban - Ethereum does not even use enormous energy anymore.

Second, for Proof of Work cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin - the myth of excessive energy use has been totally debunked on my website, I suggest you study it carefully. I will quote a few key points from the site:

Myth: Bitcoin uses as much energy as <country>

The IT, plane, car, transportation, and other industries must utilize large amounts of electricity for data centers, chemical or fuel generation, or heating, in order to provide their services. The same is true for Bitcoin.

Bitcoin needs to use a lot of energy so that its Proof of Work can prevent hackers from stealing people's bitcoins. So far it's been going great, compared to several Proof of Stake coins, which have been breached with 51% attacks.

Some people claim "We know crypto doesn’t need much energy to work." This is very ignorant because freedom from censorship is only possible in Proof of Work - transactions can still be embargoed in other algorithms.
That is to say, that the massive energy use serves to fend off attacks against the Bitcoin network in the same way that CloudFlare generates terabytes of traffic in the process of fending off bot attacks against websites. And incidentially, a lot of energy use from their networking infrastructure. But hey, I don't hear anyone complaining about Cloudflare's carbon footprint, do I? So why are cryptocurrencies so important? Because it's "useless" to you?

I could also make the argument that Cloudflare is useless to me because I do not use it on my website I just linked. But that would be a very ignorant statement, because thousands of businesses, including most of the Fortune 500 companies, rely on Cloudflare to protect their websites from DDoS attacks. It's very effective, and does the job. So its carbon footprint cannot be complained about.

As for Bitcoin and other Proof of Work cryptocurrencies, they server as a form of digital money for people who have no access to banks. This happens to include most of Africa and South America, just so you don't forget. Already in 2022, thousands of people rely on Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies to store their life savings and conduct day-to-day transactions, because their banking infrastructure is either unreliable and prone to failure, or it is corrupt and liable to funds theft by the respective governments. That is why a large percentage of the world population remains unbanked. So cryptocurrency is the prefect solution to them.

As you know, cryptocurrency relies on software to provide its networking and financial services. The protocols are hosted online, the wallet software are also hosted online, and in some cases the websites of the projects themselves are hosted in some open-source community repo online. Without this software, cryptocurrency cannot work, and the revolution that is providing financial access to so many ubanked people snce 2009 will grind to a halt.

To instantiate a ban of crypto projects just because you heard a few things you don't like about the industry is, at best, madness. It does two very bad things: First, the developers working on crypto projects on your site will have their work disrupted and they will have to migrate to a new webste. For what?

Second, it sends a negative signal across the industry that code hosting projects do not care about the mission statement that underlines most crypto projects - to provide financial access of money to everyone.

And you are doing this for what exactly?

To prevent crypto scams? Sorry, but even if all open source hosting sites like Github banned cryptocurrency projects this instant, there would still be crypto scams being perpretrated because the developers would just move to self-hosted Gitea.

Or is it as a protest against crypto's excessive energy use? Well we have already established that excessive energy usage is not useless when it is to protect services.

So, then, what benefit will banning crypto projects from Codeberg bring?

The only thing that will come out of this is crypto developers on you platform will be frustrated and will have to move their entire repo to another website. Is this really all that you want this proposal to bring about? Because I know that there is some sense of altruism in the goal of this proposal.

Unfortunately, that sense of altruism is misguided, for reasons I have explained above.

A version control platform is not supposed to make developers' lives difficult. It is supposed to make them easier.

If we were talking about banning malware projects, gambling projects, or adult projects, then you would be on to something here. But this is cryptocurrency, whose use is legal in all jurdistinctions - with the exception of a handful of nations who don't seem to like it at all, but I will leave them out of this discussion.

I completely agree with @jvanname that, and I quote: "We need people to develop cryptocurrencies without being harassed, banned, and shamed because cryptocurrencies can save countless lives."

Do you guys agree with this or no?

We are already protecting the rights of minority groups, sexual orientations, and activists. Is crypto really that malicious to you guys to go as far as believing that crypto developers need to be bothered?

Some of you believe SourceHut did "an incredibly brave thing" by banning crypto projects from its platform. But far from being brave, it is a misguided thing, and a very dangerous decision to make because it could sway other source control sites to harass crypto developers on their platforms. Do not enable repressive behavior.

Don't forget that the following is on your own homepage (emphasis mine):

Respect
Your data is not for sale. No third party cookies, no tracking. Hosted in the EU, we welcome the world.
So this means you welcome everyone except for crypto developers? As a privacy-focused source control site, I expected more inclusion to be granted to users.

My last remark, before closing this post, is one of history.

In the 1990s the NSA attempted to make distribution of strong cryptography software illegal. They failed. Why? Because everyone distributed the source code via different mediums such as CDs, books, coffee mugs and T-shirts.

You know, "crypto" got its name from cryptography. And also, many regulators and web services who similarly do not understand crypto properly also want to ban us. But our motto is: If you ban us in one place, we will appear in ten more places.

If you don't believe me, just look how many websites are hosting a copy of the Bitcoin whitepaper ever since Craig Wright tried to sue bitcoin.org to take it down.

-Ali Sherief (Zenul_Abidin)

They don't seem to be taking our appeals kindly (they just call them "walls of text" - I mean, this is a wall of text, but it is good text!) so i will be doing two more things:

- I am going to post this on Stacker News (and possibly Hacker News)
- I am going to ask you all reading this thread to make a codeberg account just to comment in favor of our appeal.

[jvanname]

And now codeberg.org has closed the issue about cryptocurrencies again permanently. The people on that thread clearly do not understand the first thing about decency and respect. They seem to be incredibly hostile and angry. Well, this just gives a lot of credence to the cryptocurrency community. Now the decision whether to ban cryptocurrencies or not will be made in private by people who hate me because I have a Ph.D. in Mathematics (and can therefore produce new functions using quantum information theory to evaluate the security of block ciphers, but people on codeberg.org hate education). Codeberg seems to be a bastion of intolerance and hostility, and no respectable human should affiliate himself with Codeberg in any way whatsoever other than telling the people there that they are intolerant.

-Joseph Van Name Ph.D.

Creator of Circcash

[NotATether]

And now codeberg.org has closed the issue about cryptocurrencies again permanently. The people on that thread clearly do not understand the first thing about decency and respect. They seem to be incredibly hostile and angry. Well, this just gives a lot of credence to the cryptocurrency community. Now the decision whether to ban cryptocurrencies or not will be made in private by people who hate me because I have a Ph.D. in Mathematics (and can therefore produce new functions using quantum information theory to evaluate the security of block ciphers, but people on codeberg.org hate education). Codeberg seems to be a bastion of intolerance and hostility, and no respectable human should affiliate himself with Codeberg in any way whatsoever other than telling the people there that they are intolerant.

-Joseph Van Name Ph.D.

Creator of Circcash

I wouldn't use a service ran by people with thin skin anyway.

If owners are easily offended by things that people can say or do, them they will just use it as an excuse to make the platform worse for everyone else. Just look how Twitter was before Elon Musk bought it for example.

Keep in mind that their default action for new accounts without phone numbers was banning them (and good luck getting an appeal from an account with no history unless you successfully managed to follow a bunch of woke accounts within a 2-minute window).

[NotATether]

Keep in mind that their default action for new accounts without phone numbers was banning them (and good luck getting an appeal from an account with no history unless you successfully managed to follow a bunch of woke accounts within a 2-minute window).

Is this your own or someone else experience?

My own. The first time I signed up for twitter, I was instantly permabanned for not having a number (surprise surprise). That was sometime in 2018 or so. Had almost the same experience a second time in 2020 and that is how I saved my account.

I'm pretty sure this can no longer happen now that the people responsible for autobanning accounts are most likely fired.

Anyway, it sheds some light on why people think Musk is doing a good job purging entitled people from its platform (or rather, causing them to purge their own accounts).


Back to topic:

It seems to me, from my short experience of Codeberg, that it is ran by a bunch of people with a very narrow viewpoint. So when they say they're having "discussions" about something, they actually intend for it to be one-dimensional where everyone agrees with them. In this case, they all hate crypto, so when one of them opens a discussion thread about banning it, they are really expecting everyone to say yes, or else they will call you names, degrade you, and threaten to ban you because something you said translates into a death threat in their very narrow worldview.

Talk about groupthink right there. Makes you glad that Bitcointalk moderators don't interfere with free speech, eh?

[James_Davi]

If all bitcoin-related stuff on GitHub got banned, it's possible that development of the Bitcoin protocol and software would move to other platforms or anonymous forums. However, it's also possible that development would continue underground and that the Bitcoin network would remain robust. After all, censorship-resistant technologies have a way of staying alive and thriving in the face of opposition.

[DaveF]

I wonder if it's got nothing to do with anything else other then they don't like crypto. Ignore the excuses they give, they are just that, excuses.

They don't like it, and have been looking around for a way to drop those projects without looking bad by saying, 'we don't like crypto, so we are not allowing you to host those projects'

And all of a sudden we have the people talking (incorrectly) about the power wast of crypto, and the people talking about the scams, and now they have a perfect excuse to those outside the crypto sphere to ban them from their platform. We know it's crap, but to the people that don't know it looks like they are doing a good thing. And they get what they want.

I still think any real project should always have a self hosted git with the 'name brand' git hosts as a redundancy.

-Dave