A message to Core: We DON'T need a PoW change.

Like anyone who holds bitcoin and what it represent dear, I am VERY pissed off with the current mining situation. That virtually a single player can cause so many problems is seriously annoying, to say the least, and I, too, have this desire to "just stick it to Jihan", somehow. But a change of PoW is not the answer.

 

A change of PoW is guaranteed to piss a lot of people off. Many more than just Jihan Wu. A change of PoW means destroying a massive amount of investment, quite possibly in the $$$ billions. Everything Bitmain invested with all their clients, some of which certainly DON'T want to attack the network. The $300m investment by Japanese GMO, which will bring a much needed breath of fresh air. And who knows, perhaps Intel, Nvdia, AMD, ARM or others are quietly working on a SHA256 ASIC. All of this investment, gone. All these people, pissed off. SERIOUSLY pissed off.

What about the community reaction? If you think everyone, individuals and businesses, would start cheering the move, you're dead wrong. In fact, I predict that most companies and individuals who are now neutral would start siding against Core.

Talking about a rift in the community? You have no idea what a proper rift is.

 

And what do angry people do? They fight back. Make no mistake - We can all scream and shout as much as we want, but if exchanges list legacy-SHA256-Bitcoin as Bitcoin, businesses agree to it, miners keep mining it AND full nodes users keep running legacy-SHA256-Bitcoin full nodes, that's what Bitcoin is. Even more so because than it's "us" who are hard forking away, not "them".

And I haven't even started about the legal consequences of such an action against anyone who'd pull the trigger. You think there would be no legal consequences? Think again. I didn't say it would be fair, but there would be legal consequences. Against individuals, in whatever country they happen to live. Deep, deep pocketed businesses would lobby the shit out of governments to punish someone. And that someone would be Core devs, a pretty obvious choice. Fair? Just? Probably not. But in the real world fair and just often succumb to business interest.

 

Antifragility does not mean Bitcoin can withstand any kind of shock, no matter how big. It means that it emerges stronger after small shocks. Changing PoW would be a GIANT shock, that would kill Bitcoin. Legacy-SHA256-Bitcoin would continue to exist, Core would not support it, so it would eventually succumb to business interest. The new-Bitcoin, on the other hand, would be just another altcoin in the public view.

Change of PoW? Sure, let's destroy Bitcoin.

 

Edit: To avoid any confusion, Core are not planning to do a PoW change at the moment. A PoW change is not on the table now. The post was a response to an agitation post where OP was claiming we need a PoW change now. We don't. PoW change is only a nuclear option, to pull only if absolutely necessary, and that's not the case now.

Submitted October 28, 2017 at 06:36PM by DesignerAccount http://ift.tt/2zP2lnL