Antidote to bitcoin conspiracy theories: study the code
I've been hearing such statements lately by some who say that bitcoin is some sort of globalist conspiracy to remove cash and promote a one world government. This video was put forth as proof:
This guy apparently can't conceive that "no one is in control" and this video was put forth because previously Russia had been against bitcoin but now Putin supports it.
First, if they want to hide this fact of a global takeover, would they make the bitcoin code open source for everyone to see? Second, even if you can't understand the code, do you think that no cypherpunk would point that out if it was true?
Here are some facts for level headed discernment between fact and fantasy...
1 - The bitcoin white paper was released in late 2008 and describes the process of creating a P2P system of value transfer without using trusted 3rd parties (a unique solution to the byzantine generals problem never before achieved without central authority).
2 - The genesis block (the first mined block of bitcoin) contains a message from the UK times that states "Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks":
This is a clear message as to why bitcoin was released. The author didn't release bitcoin in a vacuum, but worked on this problem because of the situation in the banking industry and massive corruption. His solution was to make everyone their own banker by removing the need to trust in anything other than mathematics.
3 - Bitcoin has a fixed upper limit of 21 million coins. This makes it a superior SOV (store of value) to inflatable currency. Why would governments not want this? Because a fixed upper limit puts shackles on government spending which limits its power. If you want to understand why, Stefan Molyneux has this slam dunk explanation...
4 - Once you study the code, you'll see that it's a largely decentralized system. It isn't perfect. Mining is getting much more centralized. But nobody has complete control over the whole system. The consensus rules require between 80-95% to change existing rules. The fact that Segwit2X recently failed (a proposal put forth by centralized exchanges) shows just how resilient this system is to attacks.
In the future you can be sure that centralized authority will put forth their alternatives to bitcoin. In the mean time, some might try to render it unusable by DDOS or just plain too much load on the 1 MB blocks, but Lightning Network and Schnorr signatures, and other off chain solutions are in the works. The keyword to remember is "decentralization". If you remember nothing else, remember that decentralizaton = good, centralization = bad.
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STOPThis:
And this:
Definitively, such an elegant and well designed piece of engineering.
Btw, I invite you to take a look to my second post in steemit :)