The Blacklist Debate: When is it OK to Meddle with Bitcoin's Code?
A row that broke out online this month has raised an important question about bitcoin: should people be allowed to code their own rules, and even opinions, into their own versions of the software that runs the network? The debate kicked off among users of Gentoo - a variant of the Linux operating system that prides itself on being highly configurable to suit different user requirements - when a user reported an issue on the Gentoo bug forum on 5th October. The version of bitcoind (the official reference client for interacting with the bitcoin network) distributed with Gentoo was blocking....
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Let’s start by agreeing on something: Bitcoin is a genius innovation that regulates both an economy and the technology that governs it. This technology is also decentralized, and that makes the risk of a human screw up affecting the network much less likely. But bitcoin is far from bulletproof. Right now, bitcoin developers are engaged in a battle over a change in the code that, if implemented and accepted into the network, would increase the data capacity of transaction blocks on the blockchain. Maybe it’s not a trivial modification, but it’s still a coding discussion. But should we....
Yet, the biggest crypto hub remains on the blacklist. The EU decided to remove Cayman Islands from its blacklist of tax heavens on Tuesday.The Cayman Islands is a popular jurisdiction for crypto businesses. It was added to the EU's blacklist in February of this year, so it has spent fewer than six months on the list. In 2019, the six exchanges domiciled there were responsible for over $1.5 billion in international Bitcoin (BTC) transactions.Though these numbers pale in comparison to the global leader — the Seychelles, whose 12 exchanges were responsible for $36 billion, the Seychelles....
Tether has not issued a statement giving a specific reason for blacklisting three addresses, but it has done so before to comply with law enforcement and aid exchanges after cyber attacks. Tether has added three more Ethereum addresses, holding more $150 million worth of the USDT stablecoin between them, to its blacklist.As a centralized company, Tether is able to blacklist addresses it believes are involved in crime, money laundering — or for any other reason it chooses.This is the first time Tether has blacklisted an address in 2022 but it added 312 addresses to the blacklist last year....
Decisions like these are a pivotal moment in the history of cryptocurrency. Once the hard fork goes into effect, the markets will respond to whatever comes next. The Ethereum hard fork continues to be a significant topic of debate among cryptocurrency enthusiasts. Many people have voted for this decision, to bail out The DAO and its developers. But some voices raise the concern of how Ethereum developers are forcing the community to make this decision. An exciting time dawns for Ethereum, and this debate seems to be far from over. Relying on a hard fork of source code to solve a....
Ethereum hard forks might serve as an important lesson for Bitcoin about how such a technical change to a distributed system unfolds. Ethereum’s first hard fork, for instance, resulted in a competing Ethereum chain. Wildly engaged in their own debates on forums and Reddit, Bitcoiners are currently deliberating changing key aspects of Bitcoin’s code. But the Ethereum hard fork might give them a peek into their own future. One’s position in the block size debate likely revolves around the value system each individual has developed around crypto-currency. The Bitcoin block size debate....