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Let’s do a quick thought experiment. Imagine a government becomes opposed to how certain people are using Bitcoin. In response, it establishes its own Bitcoin node software, launches a mining pool, and introduces a soft forkβ€”claiming that anyone who resists this fork is supporting illegal activity. Would you support this soft fork?

Replies (16)

Those assertions made by a government alone would make me oppose said fork. Everything can be illegal if the right people so desire. Fiat cash is the #1 medium of exchange in classical illegal activity, i.e. the sale of prohibited (both moral and immoral) goods and services.
Let’s do a quick thought experiment. Imagine a government wants to attack Bitcoin. What could they do? They can compromised a number of developers. The developers could start slowly degrading Bitcoin. They could change the definition of Bitcoin being "digital currency that uses peer-to-peer technology" to just be a "peer-to-peer network". They could change the definition of the datacarriersize. Using that as argument they could deny fixing the inscriptions spam. Then they could use the inscriptions spam as an argument that spam is unstoppable so they better blow up OP_RETURN and invite even more spam. Just like BSV did after which someone uploaded CSAM to the BSV blockchain.
No, I would not. Now, let's do another thought experiment: Imagine the Core team decides to radically change bitcoin into a piece of software that openly states that it welcomes any non-monetary-transaction-content, legal or illegal, and will relay it. They decide to call it v30. Would you run v30? Is that the hill you choose?
**** This just in.. pedoland under 'pedo software' "crisis" **** The U.S. is the only UN member state that has not yet ratified the Convention on the Rights of the Child. As of July 2025, child marriage is legal in 34 states.