Re: <nettime> accelerating eats the world

[Morlock Elloi <morlockelloi@gmail.com>]

It doesn't seem likely that the Chinese (4 mints in China mainland 
control 50+% of the hash power) will agree to such fork (even if it is 
technically feasible, which I doubt), that is capable of removing 
arbitrary transactions in the past - that would make everyone unsafe 
(like while the legislature is in session :) They have already killed 
the block size change proposal (by effectively telling 'Bitcoin core 
developers' to go f*ck themselves.)

Brute force is out of question, as re-calculating everything would mean 
stopping all Bitcoin transaction activity for the period roughly equal 
to the age of the oldest incriminating insertion - who would pay for 
those terawatt hours?

There may be more to come. The currently discovered child pornography 
was in plaintext payloads. There are thousands, if not millions, 
encrypted non-transactional payloads in the Bitcoin blockchain. What if 
some of these are also illegal porn or something equivalently 
criminalized? The perpetrators may simply publish individual keys, at 
their own pace, and make any repair attempts a bad joke. Come to think 
of it, that would be ideal poison pill for the Bitcoin. Maybe someone is 
on it as we speak ... it's easy: there are dozens of commercial services 
that you can pay to insert anything in the Bitcoin blockchain (like 
https://inthebitcoin.com )

Interesting times ahead.

The takeaway is that you don't want something in the loop of social 
interactions that majority does not understand and that doesn't have 
corrective strategy. Humans are simply not bright enough to create 
fool-proof technologies. Just go to some Bitcoin meeting and listen to 
blathering of CEOs and CTOs.

> Or, given that a majority of stakes on the blockchain *can* change
> history, and a majority of stakes with very strong financial interest
> (as in who's already wasting most electricity) might want to keep their
> toys, these images *will* be removed - along with forever removing all
> credibility of blockchain as an "indelible" or unchangeable public ledger.

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