Below is a debate on Bitcoin between AIM member Yohan Tengra and another AIM member, Brian Fernandes.

Brian Fernandes :

Why am I a Bitcoin skeptic?

Bitcoin, a cryptocurrency, is said to be free from manipulation by the globalists and the governments. Indeed, in the recent Canadian Truckers movement, when the Canadian government, credit card companies and GoFundMe, blocked funding to the movement, it was Bitcoin that came to the rescue.

However, can Bitcoin be considered as a long-term investment option, to counter the New World Order that the globalists have planned for us? This article addresses this question.

The globalists, such as Bill Gates, and many governments have been critical of Bitcoin. Just because they are critical of Bitcoin does not make it an attractive option. Bitcoin has to be considered on its merits.

A review of the Bitcoin Whitepaper available on https://bitcoin.org/en/bitcoin-paper , reveals that Bitcoin is intended as an electronic payment system for the purpose of commerce on the internet. The Whitepaper absolutely does not mention Bitcoin being offered as a long-term investment option.

Additionally, this statement on https://bitcoin.org/en/bitcoin-core/features/validation is noteworthy – “The bitcoin currency only works when people accept bitcoins in exchange for other valuable things.” There is no mention of Bitcoin being backed by something of value, such as gold or silver. In this respect Bitcoin is like Fiat currency, it has no intrinsic value of its own and only works when the public at large accepts it.

Bitcoin is open source, but this is not enough. Information whether and to what extent the globalists are holding bitcoins and whether miners are majorly controlled by the globalists is not available in the public domain. For all we know, the globalists may be secretly holding major chunks of bitcoins and may be controlling a major part of bitcoin nodes and bitcoin mining activity. The globalists may be honestly trading in Bitcoin for now, but can easily turn hostile in the future.

The globalist asset management company Blackrock has built an electronic system (aka robot) called Aladdin that automatically trades in the stock and bond markets. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AWBRldjVzuM Is there anything stopping such robotic systems from trading in Bitcoin?

Decentralization is touted as a major attraction of Bitcoin. In this context, there is a noteworthy statement on https://bitcoin.org/en/bitcoin-core/features/validation “Unfortunately, many users outsource their enforcement power. This leaves Bitcoin’s decentralization in a weakened state where a handful of miners can collude with a handful of banks and free services to change Bitcoin’s rules for all those non-verifying users who outsourced their power. “ This statement is accurate and also the common man has no way of checking the current level of decentralization of Bitcoin.

Moreever, the story of Mike Hearn needs to be told. Mike Hearn had quit his lucrative job at Google to work full time as a Bitcoin Core developer. However, a few years later he quit working for Bitcoin and sold all his bitcoins. He wrote a blog https://blog.plan99.net/the-resolution-of-the-bitcoin-experiment-dabb30201f7 wherein he stated “What was meant to be a new, decentralised form of money that lacked “systemically important institutions” and “too big to fail” has become something even worse: a system completely controlled by just a handful of people. “ The decentralized nature of Bitcoin is thus to be suspected.

Finally, Bitcoin needs internet connectivity. In this age of censorship, if internet of specific people gets blocked because they are spreading say anti-vaccine messages online, then access to Bitcoin is gone. If life-savings are invested in Bitcoin, this would be catastrophic for the investor.

To conclude, while Bitcoin has its uses as an electronic payment system, it is suspect as a long-term investment avenue.

[Article written by Brian Fernandes, NSC member of AIM. Views are personal.]

Response by Yohan Tengra :


1) Bill Gates and Musk have not just been critical of bitcoin, they’ve dismissed it because it uses too much energy, something which goes against the UN Agenda 2030 for sustainable development (technocracy) – https://www.forbes.com/sites/jonathanponciano/2021/03/09/bill-gates-bitcoin-crypto-climate-change/?sh=55c9d2a36822

They are critical of it because a blockchain with actual mining power behind it makes the transactions irreversible and lets people send their money to anyone in a permissionless fashion, among other reasons. This is also the reason why globalist institutions have no problem promoting blockchains which aren’t based on mining but are instead based on proof of stake (like ripple). The world economic forum has actually shared posts which promote proof of stake (which is what most cryptocurrencies use) over proof of work (which is what bitcoin uses). Proof of stake coins make it easier for the globalists to control that currency, proof of work is what creates real decentralisation, something that makes Bitcoin far more superior to other cryptos. To learn more indepth about the difference between proof of work and proof of stake and why the globalists prefer the latter and dont prefer bitcoin – https://endthefud.org/PoW


2) The Bitcoin whitepaper does talk about it being an electronic payment system for the purpose of commerce. But thinking of it simply as a currency ignores the knowledge of monetary history and the evolution of money. Sound money has certain properties which have decided which commodities have won in history in the race to become money. Everything from seashells to stones have been used as money in the past. What made gold win in this race to become money? Its properties, which are its limited supply, divisibility, fungibility, unit of account and store of value. Bitcoin shares all of these properties and actually offers some advantages over gold. Before gold became used in commerce, people first used it as a store of value. This is a similar phase that bitcoin is in while its on its path to full monetization. Gold is a store of value and at the same time can be used in commerce, and the same applies for Bitcoin. Sound money is not just used to exchange value but is also used to store it over long periods of time, this is an important property of any good money.


3) This idea is known as the intrinsic value myth. There is no intrinsic value in anything, nor even gold and silver. Gold derives its value because of the use and utility which it offers to the user, namely its properties which make it good money, as well as the ability of gold to be used in certain industries. Similarly Bitcoin also offers unique use cases to its users, due to which it derives its value, as its use cases generate demand since people want to use bitcoin due to its usecases. All value is derived as a result of demand and supply forces

Bitcoin’s intrinsic value lies in the fact that it is a scarce, uncorrelated asset with unique intangible properties (immutable, open, borderless, decentralized, censorship resistant, etc.). For the first time in history, anyone in the world with an internet connection can function as their very own bank while participating in the economy with full control of their wealth. The six characteristics of money are durability, portability, divisibility, uniformity, limited supply, and acceptability. Many bitcoin proponents adamantly believe that bitcoin checks all of these boxes and is therefore hard money with real intrinsic value. Oftentimes, those who ascribe zero intrinsic value to bitcoin have done so by way of imperfect knowledge, a narrow perspective, and/or old-aged frameworks that under-represent, if not misrepresent, the capabilities of bitcoin and the very idea of “value”. Bitcoin has no industrial use, but neither does emeralds, collectible coins, digital game tokens or Picassos, but they all have value. Gold’s industrial use is tiny compared to its monetary use stored as bars or coins in vaults around the world.

Further reading :

Infact this is the revolution in economic thought which the austrian school of economics brought about, with their subjective value theory, resolving the debate between the labour theory of value and the power theory of value – https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subjective_theory_of_value


4) Bitcoin mining and node ownership is highly decentralised.

Mining distribution – https://bitcoinmagazine.com/.image/c_limit%2Ccs_srgb%2Cq_auto:good%2Cw_828/MTc5Mjk3ODU1ODY4NjQzMDEx/image.webp

Also the concern around mining centralisation assumes that miners have the ability to take over bitcoin. The potential to do damage by possessing the majority of mining power is very limited: A double spending of the miner’s own funds would be possible by investing massive amounts of energy and money before the Bitcoin protocol was changed to exclude the bad actor and rendering his effort futile. So called 51% attacks, where one entity has more than half of the hashing power, are very expensive to pull off, require an enormous amount of coordination and deliver very little benefit for the attacker.

This is what cannot be done with a 51% attack:

You can’t steal the people’s money
You can’t change the consensus rules
You can’t make invalid transaction become valid
This is what can be done with a 51% attack:

Double spending of the attackers Bitcoin

Very expensive attack that could be fended off with a code change. It is certainly safer to just use your hashpower to profit from securing the network rather than attacking it.

Mine empty blocks and render the network useless

Has to be upheld for a long time to prevent the intended use of Bitcoin. This attack costs massive amounts of money and energy. If the attacker does not stop on its own a code change could be implemented to render the attackers hardware worthless.

Further reading – https://blog.lopp.net/are-chinese-miners-threat-bitcoin/ (the article is about china but the same logic applies for any entity we are concerned about, including the globalists)

5) Bitcoin node distribution – https://tonevays.com/Content/images/mediamanager/Bitnodes.png


6) What about the majority of the bitcoins being held by a few people? (applies to globalists owning btc)

Many people love to demonize Bitcoin because a few people happen to have invested wisely in the early days and now hold a significant amount of wealth in bitcoins. Besides the fact that these statistics are very biased, as many large accounts are custodial holding bitcoins on behalf of many clients, the beauty of the system is that having a large amount of bitcoins does not give you any advantages on how the system functions. This is not true for many other Blockchains. Those with a Proof of Stake system of consensus have made a decision that the early adopters and those who are already wealthy in that coin, should have all the advantages in decision making and gain future wealth by staking those coins, earning even more coins. Contrary to PoS (or DPoS) promoters, their systems can’t possibly be as decentralized as Bitcoin’s because of the lack of mining, centralization of coins held, and most likely a single dictator in charge of the code. All of which leads to only a handful of Nodes being relevant with the most notable Node belonging to the lead developer. Hence any Blockchain that hands over decentralization power to the most wealthy is by default an inferior and more centralized system.


7) Blackrock having a bot to trade assets is nothing new. Many traders develop bots based on certain formulas and codes which trade assets. Sure that can be used to trade any asset class including bitcoin but that does not affect the network in any way. It does not affect the price uniquely either compared to blackrock using the same capital to trade via a human. So having a robot doesnt make the price more prone to manipulation as the capital they have is still fixed


8) This claim can be proved wrong with the example of the segwit2x debate. This was a contentious issue that arose in bitcoins history couple of years ago, where miners and big money people wanted to implement a fork and change bitcoins rules, in a way that would make it more centralised. The users who ran their own nodes actually prevented that from happening. So no, there have been tangible examples in the past of big money and miners trying to change bitcoins ruleset, but the people have prevented that because the people who run their own node have more power than the miners. I have provided many links and resources above so that people can verify how decentralised the mining and node ownership is, so its false to say that people dont have a way to verify it. https://www.truthcoin.info/blog/measuring-decentralization/


9) Bitcoin development is highly decentralised. Mike Hearn has made many attempts to try and damage bitcoin over the years and its the decentralisation of code development thats actually rendered his attempts futile.

“All this effort to keep Bitcoin Core code sufficiently decentralized is not only important to attract the best talent to advance Bitcoin, but also to prevent malicious spying technology, back doors or anything else that could hinder the efforts of making Bitcoin an unstoppable financial force for decades to come. This was a big deal in 2015 when Mike Hearn attempted to push out a code upgrade that contained an “unmentioned addition which periodically downloads lists of Tor IP addresses for blacklisting.”

https://cypherpunks.cpunks.narkive.com/wzm0Io3G/m-hearn-adds-privacy-depriority-to-bitcoin-xt-calls-your-tor-proxy-etc-use-unimportant

More perspective on Mike hearn and why he did what he did – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CF8CqdY7Ans

This is a very indepth article on how bitcoin code development works and its decentralised nature – https://blog.lopp.net/who-controls-bitcoin-core-/


10) Even if an awakened persons home internet is cutoff, one can always go out and use someone elses internet or a public wifi in order to send a transaction. If the elite rollout internet passports after a false flag, then yes this will be an issue, but awakened people will also push back and not let that happen as internet passports will not just cutoff our access to information but also will cut off our access to the entire grid, so that time we will have much bigger issues to worry about that money. and even while we dont have access to internet our bitcoin will be safe, we can transfer it later when we get access from the black market. bitcoin developers have built tools wherein we can broadcast bitcoin transactions without using the internet, by relying on radio and mesh networks as well as the blockstream satellite. Whether with a small satellite device, or even over radio waves, you can send and receive bitcoin from anywhere on earth.


There are many more misconceptions, such as the belief that quantum computing will break bitcoin, bitcoin being too volatile, bitcoin being bad for the environment, block rewards stopping after many years will end bitcoin, terrorists and child porn sellers use bitcoin, etc.

These and many more are addressed extensively in these resources :


Finally, here is an indept piece by a human rights activist debunking persistent myths – https://www.coincenter.org/a-human-rights-activists-response-to-bitcoin-critics/

Response by Brian Fernandes :


1 – Not disputing that proof of stake makes it easier for globalists to control the cryptocurrency. However, the statement that proof of work creates real decentralization is under contention. While a lot of theory has been put in the rebuttal, external practical verification is required whether Bitcoin has achieved real decentralization in the 10+ years of its existence.

Here decentralization means that a) Bitcoins mining power does not get concentrated into a few pools and b) No entity or related set of entities holds a disproportionate number of bitcoins compared to the rest.
For example, for public traded companies, the names of the major shareholders along with the percentage of holdings is public information. We even know that Bill Gates has the highest ownership of farmland in America. In the rebuttal countrywide distribution of bitcoins is shown, but no verifiable evidence is produced that mining power is not concentrated into a few pools nor whether there are entities holding disproportionately high number of bitcoins.
Admittedly, there is a trade-off between privacy and proving that decentralization is achieved. In the higher interest of decentralization, it is essential for bitcoin.org to state if there are any entities controlling mining and holding disproportionately high number of bitcoins, along with the percentages and Bitcoin addresses. This information is not available, nor given in the rebuttal, thereby putting the decentralization concept into doubt.

2 and #3 – The article explores whether bitcoins will help to tide over the economic crises that is expected if the globalists proceed with their plans for The Great Reset. The intrinsic value has to be judged in that context. In that context, having something of value in one’s own possession, that does not depend on any other entity to access will score high in intrinsic value.

4 and #5 – Geographical (country wide) distribution of nodes and miners is given in the rebuttal. There is no information on say, how many nodes/miners are there in a country say China or America. This cannot be accepted as verifiable proof of decentralization.

Executing the COVID-19 pandemic itself for example required an enormous amount of coordination by the globalists. In this AI age, same level of coordination cannot be ruled out in Bitcoin attack. Such an attack, as agreed, would be in nature of double spending of the attackers’ bitcoins – and this would be equivalent of spending money that one does not own in Fiat currency – with disastrous effects for the common saver.

6 – A large number of bitcoins, in the hands of a few malicious users, when used in coordinated attacks (double spending) would be disastrous for Bitcoin itself. If the attackers are globalists, they won’t do this for personal gain, but to undermine the Bitcoin system. The net effect would be the common man offloading his bitcoins, which would then be like a run on a bank.

Also imagine a stand-alone bank having just one person owning half of the total deposits in the bank. If this person was to redeem all his deposits (not for personal gain but to spite the bank), the bank will likely collapse. A similar scenario is plausible in Bitcoin, which is why information on whether any entity or set of related entities are holding very high number of bitcoins is required.

7 – Having robots makes it easier to coordinate attacks

8 – The rebuttal relies on decentralization, which itself is doubted in points #1, #4 and #5 of this response.

9 – Blog of Mike Hearn is quoted in the article to bolster the claim against decentralization. Doubts about decentralization is already responded in points #1, #4 and #5. Methods of Mike Hearn is not a debate point.

10 – If id2020 is enforced and Bills like Online Safety Bill (currently in UK) becomes law all over the world, then it will become difficult to use someone’s else internet. As mentioned earlier, my article touches upon Bitcoin in a gloom and doom scenario – that is the globalists have been successful in a great many steps towards New World Order.

Response by Yohan Tengra


1) For argument sake, if we left all of the theory out of this (which we shouldnt be doing because it is understanding the technicals which will give us a deep understanding of how bitcoin really works), the proof for Bitcoins decentralisation lies in the practical outcome of the blocksize debate. People who have just started looking into cryptocurrency are not aware of the civil war that raged in the bitcoin space from 2015-2019. The debate was about the best way to scale bitcoin. The miners and big bitcoin businesses were in favor bigger blocks, as this would give the biggest miners an advantage to find the next block faster, and in turn promote mining centralisation. Bitcoiners who care about maintaining the decentralisation of the network wanted small blocks as that would keep the size of the blockchain limited, and allow normal people to run their bitcoin nodes, which are key for bitcoins decentralisation as it is the node runners who enforce which version of the protocol is Bitcoin. Big blocks would lead to the size of the blockchain increasing to a point where only industrial operations would be able to run nodes, thus making node distribution highly centralised between a couple of giant entities/corporations.

Who won? The community of users who wanted to keep bitcoin decentralised and prevent a hard fork. They proceeded to implement segwit, which paved the way for the lightning network that exists today. Hence the users won against huge bitcoin exchanges and companies, who had millions of dollars of power put together. As a result of this, mining and node centralisation was successfully prevented, and bitcoin was able to scale via a softfork which didnt split the network, something that would happen in a hardfork that the big blockers wanted. Mike Hearn (cited by Brian) was a big blocker himself, someone who actually tried to introduce anti-privacy code into bitcoin, supported mining and node centralisation, and then went on to work for enterprise blockchains like R3. Hence it is ironical that Brian is concerned about decentralisation but cites the example of a person who tried many times to damage bitcoins decentralisation, as some kind of proof that bitcoin is not decentralised.

This is incontrovertible proof that Bitcoin is sufficiently decentralised to prevent takeovers by big miners and businesses, even when they had a lot of economic power to do so, and refutes the speculative concerns raised by Brian in this regard practically. A full timeline wise summary of the entire debate and what happened can be found here : https://www.bitrawr.com/bitcoin-block-size-debate-explained

https://medium.com/@nic__carter/the-blocksize-war-review-487c18f42c86


1) Bitcoins mining power is not centralised with a few pools. The author of the original article (Brian) has little practical experience being involved in the space, whereas I actually run a full node myself (hence playing my part in maintaining bitcoins decentralisation), and have been involved in the Bitcoin space and the politics surrounding it since 2017. I have seen Bitcoin mining distribution over the years, and it has now actually become more evenly distributed than it was earlier. During the blocksize debate, there were many mining operations which supported the users too. There are new technical upgrades which have come into Bitcoin mining which are further decentralising mining even more. With this new upgrade, individuals who pool in their mining power into a pool will have much more control over what is done with their hashrate rather than the pool operator having that control. Hence that will prevent the misuse of the hasrate of the individuals signing up to a pool by pool operators.

https://braiins.com/blog/stratum-v2-bitcoin-decentralization

There was one time in the past where a pool called ghash actually reached 51%, and they voluntarily downgraded their hashrate due to various aspects of gametheory.

“In July 2014, the GHash.IO mining pool exceeded the 51% threshold, which forced the bitcoin community to discuss the possibility of finding a common solution to this threat. Accordingly, GHash.IO released a voluntary statement, promising that it will not exceed 39.99% of the overall bitcoin hashrate. Moreover, GHash.IO representatives asked other mining pools to follow their example for the sake of the entire bitcoin community.[2] It also stated that a new committee should be created to act as a watchdog against the 51% problem.This committee would include representatives of the mining pools, bitcoin businesses and other specialists in the field.”

Brian talks with great ease as to how easy it would be for miners to launch an attack in the event that they gained 51% hashrate. But there are several reasons for them not to do this, understanding these reasons involves understanding cryptocurrency game theory – https://blockgeeks.com/guides/cryptocurrency-game-theory/


1) For example, in 2017, there was a civil war of sorts that emerged in bitcoin. Many of the largest companies that provide bitcoin custody and exchange services aligned with large bitcoin miners that controlled 85%+ of the network’s mining capacity (or hash rate) in an attempt to force a change to the consensus rules. This group of power brokers wanted to double the bitcoin block size as a means to increase the network’s transaction capacity. However, an increase to the block size would have required a change to the network consensus rules, which would have split (or hard-forked) the network. As part of a negotiated “agreement,” the group proposed to activate a significant network upgrade (referred to as Segwit – an upgrade that would not change the consensus rules) at the same time the block size would be doubled (which would have changed the consensus rules). With most all large service providers and miners onboard, plans were set in motion to effect the changes. However, a curve ball was thrown when a user-led effort prompted the activation of the Segwit network upgrade without changing the network consensus rules and without increasing the block size (read more here). The effort to change the network’s consensus rules failed miserably and bitcoin steadily marched forward undisturbed. In practice, it often cannot be known whether bitcoin is resistant to various threats until the threats present themselves. In this case, it was disorder that prevented coordinated forces from influencing the network, and at the same time, everyone learned the extent to which bitcoin was resistant to censorship, which further strengthened the network.

This episode in bitcoin’s history demonstrated that no one was in control of the network. Not even the most powerful companies and miners, practically all aligned, could change bitcoin. It was an incontrovertible demonstration of the network’s resistance to censorship. It may have seemed like an inconsequential change. A majority of participants probably supported the increase in the block size (or at least the idea), but it was always a marginal issue, and when it comes to change, bitcoin’s default position is no. Only an overwhelming majority of all participants (naturally with competing priorities) can change the network’s consensus rules. And it really was never a debate about block size or transaction capacity. What was at stake was whether or not bitcoin was sufficiently decentralized to prevent external and powerful forces from influencing the network and changing the consensus rules. See, it’s a slippery slope. If bitcoin were susceptible to change by the dictate of a few centralized companies and miners, it would have established that bitcoin were censorable. And if bitcoin were censorable, then all bets would be off. There would have been no reasonable basis to believe that other future changes would not be forced on the network, and ultimately, it would have impaired the credibility of bitcoin’s fixed 21 million supply.


That the most powerful players in bitcoin could not influence the network reinforced its viability, and it was only possible because of the disorder inherent to the system itself. It was impossible to collude or to coopt the network because of decentralization. And it did not just show bitcoin to be resilient, the failure itself made the network stronger. It educated the entire network on the importance of censorship resistance and demonstrated just how uncensorable bitcoin had become. It also informs future behavior as the economic costs and consequences are both real and permanent. Resources to support the effort turned into sunk costs, reputations were damaged, and costly trades were made. All said, confidence in bitcoin increased as a function of the failed attempts to control the network, and confidence is not just a passive descriptor. It dissuades future attempts to coopt the network and drives adoption. Increasing adoption further decentralizes the network, making it even more resistant to censorship and outside influence. It may seem like chaos, but really, social disorder was and will continue to be an asset that secures the network from unpredictable and undesired change.


1) the point made by brian that bitcoin.org should state as to if there are any entities controlling mining and holding disproportionately high number of bitcoins. This reflects his lack of understanding of how Bitcoin works. bitcoin.org does not own bitcoin nor is the leader of bitcoin maintaining the website. bitcoin does not have a leader or a ceo. bitcoin.org is just another website that has information about bitcoin, like the rest of the websites referenced by me. it is not the final or authoritative word on all things bitcoin.

Details on mining distribution have been given in this article which analyses reports published by different parties – https://bitcoinmagazine.com/business/the-sun-never-sets-on-bitcoin-mining-decentralization-continues-as-china-flounders

https://btc.com/stats/pool (this is not a country wise distribution but a pool wise distribution)

Hence it is incorrect to say that information on the distribution of mining is not available.

Data on full nodes :

http://luke.dashjr.org/programs/bitcoin/files/charts/security.html?201817144

https://bitnodes.io/

1) Bitcoin wealth and ownership has actually become more evenly distributed than it was before. This information is also publically available via reports published by certain firms and parties. Hence it is incorrect to say that we dont have an idea about bitcoin wealth distribution. There are also certain myths echoed by many regarding wealth concentration in bitcoin, which have been addressed in these two indepth pieces

https://ecommerceinstitut.de/bitcoin-wealth/

https://ecommerceinstitut.de/bitcoin-wealth-is-becoming-more-evenly-distributed-over-time-2-4-2/


2 & 3) In that case even gold & silver wont have intrinsic value as you wont be able to do anything with those metals without depending on another entity in a totally technocratic society. If the great reset is implemented then the government will come into your house, seize your assets (which makes bitcoin way better than gold and silver as you can store money invisibly without the govt coming to know) and make you live in a pod. They will take away all your assets under a national debt relief program, and make you live in a microapartment. All resource ownership will be centralised with the elite, and we will be rationed everything. Hence bitcoin will be the only asset at that time which we will be able to protect from confiscation, everything tangible will be seized by robot armies. If this is really the authors true concern, then he should not just be a bitcoin skeptic, but be a gold, silver, and resource skeptic in general, in the context of the elite being able to manifest their plans. One should wonder why he wrote an article just singling out Bitcoin in the context of the great reset, an asset that would protect us way more in the great reset than gold or silver ever could.

If we are thinking of a purely survival scenario where we are stranded alone without a community, then only the things which help us survive will have value. That kind of scenario wont have any use for money, money itself was developed to facilitate free trade between different parties. Even if we are living in a community with some resources to ourselves, Bitcoin will have intrinsic value in that society to serve as sound money.


4,5 & 6) Brian doesn’t understand what double spending means. Lets say i had 1 million bitcoin, and got control of over 51% of the hashrate. This does not mean that i will be able to spend my 1 million bitcoin twice. It only applies when we are buying something from someone, have sent them bitcoin in return for goods/services, they give us the goods/services while waiting for the bitcoin to be received by them, and i then broadcast and mine another transaction wherein the funds that were supposed to be received by him are directed back to me.


6) Lets imagine the worst case scenario, nation state collusion to do a 51% attack. This is how it would work out :

“There are probably a thousand+ mining farms scattered throughout China; it would take some effort for the government to seize them all. I suspect it would be nearly impossible for the state to start seizing control of mining facilities without the news leaking to the rest of the world. If we heard of such activity taking place, you can be sure that Bitcoin stakeholders would start planning emergency actions.

An easier attack vector would be against mining pools; at time of writing it appears that over 70% of hashpower is being coordinated through fewer than 10 mining pools that are located in China.Of course it’s far more feasible for a nation state to identify and attack 10 targets within its borders simultaneously than it is for them to attack a thousand simultaneously.

On the flip side, switching mining pools is incredibly easy for miners. Once again it becomes a question of being able to perform an attack covertly. Given how many independent entities are observing activity on the Bitcoin network, it’s practically guaranteed that within a matter of minutes an alert would be sounded and miners would start looking into taking action against malicious actors. At time of writing we even have Twitter bots that put out alerts about any orphaned blocks. It’s hard to imagine a scenario in which a state actor would be able to quickly and covertly seize enough hashpower to perform an ongoing attack that lasts more than a few hours. A worst case scenario in which state actors did seize all of the physical equipment could result in China only mining empty blocks and orphaning other blocks that did contain transactions, essentially halting all transaction confirmations on the network. Then it would become a game of either patiently waiting for them to give up or coordinating a code change that would make their hashing machines worthless.

Point being, any large-scale mining attack is going to be limited in its effectiveness for a variety of reasons and will be unlikely to disrupt network operations for more than a short period of time.”


6) There are many resources on how a 51% attack done by nation state coordination will not result in bitcoin being destroyed or ending even in worse case scenarios.


7) The robots will only work in influencing bitcoin price, which cant be influenced more than a person trading bitcoin with their capital. it wont have any influence on any of the nodes, mining or code development, which is what matters when it comes to bitcoin decentralisation.


10) The author should consider becoming a skeptic of bank FDs, mutual funds, gold, silver, farms, property, and every other tangible asset, as all of these will be seized in a great reset technocratic takeover. Bitcoin is the only thing that is not tangible, which the elites wont be able to seize from us, provided we acquire and store our bitcoin correctly.


9) Ive addressed mike extensively above in all my points, both in the previous posts as well as these.

Concluding remarks : I have addressed every single one of the points raised and countered them with both practical as well as technical refutations. Brian hasn’t addressed many of my points, such as the fact that we could use bitcoin today even without having an internet connection in an offgrid setting, by using radio and mesh networking devices that are already available on the market and a satellite node, among others. Brian also singles out speculative downsides against bitcoin, when those same things apply to gold, silver, bank fds, and all the other assets we are using too. For example, when brian is concerned about wealth centralisation, why just single out bitcoin? Since the elite own a large majority of the resources and money on the planet, it is natural that they will have the potential to own majority of the assets, so bitcoin is not alone in that regard. for concerns about mining centralisation, similar concerns can be raised about gold or silver mining. or price manipulation as well, that extends to all asset classes. for concerns about doomsday scenarios, other tangible assets would fare far worse than bitcoin. Brian should rewrite his article on being an everything skeptic if he was logically consistent. Hence I end the discussion from my side as I have laid out all the resources and points which will help open minded readers to come to the right conclusions about this.

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