{"id":25146,"date":"2016-04-27T15:31:21","date_gmt":"2016-04-27T15:31:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ci027cfe78800026c3"},"modified":"2016-04-27T15:31:21","modified_gmt":"2016-04-27T15:31:21","slug":"mit-panel-democracy-is-antithetical-to-what-bitcoin-represents-1461771081","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/culture\/mit-panel-democracy-is-antithetical-to-what-bitcoin-represents-1461771081","title":{"rendered":"MIT Panel: Democracy Is Antithetical to What Bitcoin Represents"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Day one of last month\u2019s MIT Bitcoin Expo<\/a> featured a panel discussion on various improvements to Bitcoin that are either currently in the works or already deployed on the network. Participants on the panel were Blockstream<\/a> mathematician Andrew Poelstra<\/a>, Blockstream Core Tech Engineer Mark Friedenbach<\/a>, Lightning Network<\/a> co-creator Joseph Poon<\/a> and Bitcoin Core<\/a> contributor Jonas Schnelli<\/a>.<\/p>\n

During the Q&A; portion of the panel, an audience member asked the participants to share their opinions on the previous presentation, in which the World Bitcoin Network<\/a>\u2019s James D\u2019Angelo<\/a> posited the idea of replacing Bitcoin\u2019s proof-of-work<\/a> with elected individuals who would be trusted with mining blocks<\/a>. The panel seemed generally bearish on D\u2019Angelo\u2019s proposal. Generally, the panel disagreed with the idea of turning Bitcoin into a democratically controlled currency.<\/p>\n

Bitcoin Is Not a Democracy<\/strong><\/p>\n

Friedenbach was the first to respond to the audience member\u2019s question, and he made a point of directly taking on the idea of Bitcoin as a democratically controlled currency. He noted:<\/p>\n

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\u201cBitcoin is not a democracy. It was never designed to be a democracy. Democracy is antithetical to what Bitcoin represents, which is consensus even in the face of mob-rule voting the other way.\u201d <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

The idea that changes to Bitcoin should be governed democratically has been popularized by some supporters of Bitcoin Classic<\/a>. Most notably, Coinbase<\/a> CEO Brian Armstrong<\/a> has referred<\/a> to hard forks<\/a> as elections.<\/p>\n

Bitcoin Runs on Consensus<\/strong><\/p>\n

Friedenbach went on to explain that any change to the consensus algorithm<\/a> in Bitcoin that does not have universal support from nodes will result in a fork. He added, \u201cThat is as user-protecting as it is scary when things break.\u201d<\/p>\n

In Friedenbach\u2019s view, the difficulties associated with making changes to Bitcoin\u2019s consensus rules are what make the system valuable in the first place. He stated:<\/p>\n

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\u201cIt\u2019s the source of everything that makes Bitcoin great in terms of irrevocability of payments and the fact that you can’t have your funds seized. This is all because it is really difficult and very hard to change the Bitcoin protocol.\u201d <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

While systems that do not require consensus can evolve faster, it\u2019s also more likely for the wrong changes to be made when near-universal agreement on those alterations is not required. With a system based on consensus, Bitcoin holders can be assured that a bitcoin today will still be a bitcoin tomorrow. Although this makes it harder for Bitcoin to upgrade at the base level, innovation can still take place at layers above the Bitcoin blockchain<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Advocates of Bitcoin\u2019s use as digital gold tend to agree with the near-universal consensus requirement of Bitcoin development, while individuals focused on the P2P payments aspect of the system, such as Bitcoin Classic developer Gavin Andresen<\/a>, would like to see the protocol evolve more quickly — without the need for approval by nearly everyone on the network.<\/p>\n

Political Money Already Exists<\/strong><\/p>\n

Friedenbach also agreed with remarks made by Bitcoin Core contributor Cory Fields<\/a> in terms of the healthy contentiousness found in the community. In regard to the block size debate<\/a>, he stated, \u201cIf this was political money, 18 months ago this would have been over.\u201d<\/p>\n

Poelstra agreed with Friedenbach\u2019s comments on Bitcoin as apolitical money. He stated:<\/p>\n

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\u201cIt\u2019s not a solution to replace Bitcoin with a political currency. There are lots of political currencies out there today. If you think that\u2019s a solution, you\u2019re welcome to switch to a political currency. Changing Bitcoin to be another one — however you could do that — I don\u2019t think that\u2019s a solution. That\u2019s just shutting down Bitcoin.\u201d <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

A transcript of the full panel discussion is available online<\/a> thanks to Bryan Bishop.<\/p>\n

Updated at 11:24 am EST on 5\/28\/2016 to add a link to the panel transcript.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Day one of last month\u2019s MIT Bitcoin Expo featured a panel discussion on various improvements to Bitcoin that are either currently in the works or already deployed on the network. Participants on the panel were Blockstream mathematician Andrew Poelstra, Blockstream Core Tech Engineer Mark Friedenbach, Lightning Network co-creator Joseph Poon and Bitcoin Core contributor Jonas […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3445,"featured_media":25147,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[1038,514,1969,477],"class_list":{"0":"post-25146","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-culture","8":"tag-core","9":"tag-democracy","10":"tag-individuals","11":"tag-payments"},"author_data":{"id":3445,"name":"Kyle Torpey","nicename":"kyle-torpey","avatar_url":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/12\/kyle-torpey-promo-image-96x96.jpg"},"featured_image_url":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/11\/mit-panel-democracy-is-antithetical-to-what-bitcoin-represents.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25146","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3445"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25146"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25146\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/25147"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25146"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25146"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25146"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}