Ken M Coin

"the Internet views censorship as damage and routes around it" - John Gilmore (cypherpunks list co-founder) the Internet, like bitcoin, is ungovernable: you can't build checkpoints, moderate content, cant stop spam via protocols. that's why hashcash exists: a market solution!

Imagine a decentralized system billed as censorship/sybil resistant with 360 million people relying on it, but its protocol rules can be forcibly changed if just 0.0014% of them run a different software version. This is what BIP-110ers genuinely believe, many without realizing it

Re BIP 110, firstly, I fully agree Bitcoin is money. That is its design: peer to peer electronic cash. Before anyone jumps to conclusions, this isn’t me siding with Saylor, Adam Back, Bailey, or anyone else. I strongly disagree with them on many things. This is simply my own view. The whole point of decentralization is that no one gets to police the network or impose rules on everyone else. BIP 110 attempts to do exactly that by introducing consensus rules that filter what people can include in transactions. Core v30 only changed an optional default policy in one client that anyone can configure, ignore, or bypass. BIP 110 is fundamentally different because it seeks to hard-code those restrictions into Bitcoin’s consensus. That conflicts with Bitcoin’s permissionless, censorship-resistant foundation. We can all dislike spam and want Bitcoin to remain money first, but the answer isn’t to reshape consensus to police network activity. It’s to respect the decentralized immune system that protects Bitcoin’s core properties. If people ultimately prefer a different direction, Bitcoin’s open source nature allows them to pursue it through a fork. That’s the beauty of a permissionless system.

I asked Grok: What is the single most important measure of bitcoin decentralization? 👇 The ability (and practice) of individuals to run their own full verifying nodes. This is the single most important measure of Bitcoin’s decentralization. Everything else—mining distribution, developer influence, pools, etc.—ultimately flows from or is checked by users independently validating the rules with their own nodes. If enough people can and do run nodes, the network remains resistant to capture, censorship, or rule changes without broad consent. It directly enables “don’t trust, verify”.

Fine. They still fixed the problem in the latest versions. And old versions will continue to get more and more out of date in terms of security. People can do what they want. I still want an actual exploited bug fixed in the latest software version. And, also, maybe not making half-baked upgrades. Had these settings been in place from the time Taproot was implemented, we wouldn't be having this conversation. This is both a software development lifecyle issue and a vulnerability management issue. The vulnerability management side was easy to fix. Easy. And I guarantee you, this furore would not have happened. Spam might have continued to get relayed, but it would have been harder for them. And Core wouldn't be stuffing their head in the sand at best and officially supporting it at worst.

Fox's Rachel Campos-Duffy calls out Netanyahu on his plan to "merge" the US and Israel's militaries. "Will that drawing down of foreign aid [over the next ten years] be compensated by the proposal to have a merging of some sort between our Pentagon and your military?" "Yeah," Netanyahu responds. "I'm calling it, 'From aid to partnership…'" "I think the meshing of our two great countries of talent would strengthen America's competitive position." "[That] certainly brings up some issues of sovereignty," Campos-Duffy responds.