Thread by @MichaelRoerade

1\ #Ethereum and most other #altcoin network infrastructure runs predominantly on Amazon servers because their additional "functionality" requires a lot more computing power.

Why is that a huge risk in today's reality?

A thread 🧵⬇️

2\ Marketing of most #cryptocurrencies relies strongly on emphasizing how their #blockhain is better, faster and more versatile than #Bitcoin.

99% of these projects' newbie target audience don't understand that bitcoin's seemingly limited utility is a feature and not a bug.

3\ That's because their huge VC backed marketing teams carefully avoid pointing out that the advanced features they are promoting and the way these projects are funded and created imply strong centralization of both infrastructure and governance.

4\ The fact that bitcoin blocks are limited in the amount of transactions they can process per second and it doesn't allow for Turing complete smart contracts, means that after 13 years of operation, the entire history of all bitcoin transactions, is currently less than 400 GB.

5\ This also means that calculating cryptographic integrity of ALL blocks, from the first (Genesis) block, constructed by Satoshi Nakamoto in 2009, to the latest block mined a few minutes ago, can be done with a mini computer that has less computing power than most smartphones.

6\ All that is needed to operate a full bitcoin node is a hard drive to store the entire transaction history, a mini computer such as a #raspberrypi and some free open source software. All this costs less than $250.

⬇️ This is my node ⬇️

(OK, I added a $ 0.90 LED strip 😁)

7\ This low threshold to participation in verification of validity of each new block, means that thousands of people run their own nodes.

This website currently displays 15,307 nodes, but many are invisible behind TOR, so total is estimated to be >100K

bitnodes.io

8\ Instead of having the bulk of its network infrastructure running in commercial cloud server facilities, the bitcoin network mainly consists of enthusiasts running a node at home.

9\ Mining operations are also distributed across the globe. Until recently, a large percentage of miners was located in China. But after it banned bitcoin mining some time ago, that capacity has moved to other countries.

10\ The vast decentralization that results from both the nodes that verify validity of blocks and miners that use energy to process transactions and secure the network being distributed all over the world, means there is no single point of failure.

11\ The sacrifices in terms of speed and capacity that guarantee sufficient decentralization, obviously created a barrier to mass adoption of bitcoin for everyday use. That's why the #LightningNetwork was created as a second layer on top of bitcoin's base layer.

12\ Similar to how credit card companies achieve high throughput capacity by only transferring the transaction information and deferring actual bulk settlement of the funds with banks, Lightning Network allows for instantaneous transactions at virtually no cost.

13\ #ElSalvador is the first country to have adopted the Lightning Network to give the 70% of its population that is unbanked access to fast and cheap digital payments.

This is what using it to buy a coffee with #bitcoin looks like in practice ⬇️

@nayibbukele

14\ In sharp contrast, over the last few weeks, we've seen how the Canadian government has forced crowd funding platforms, banks and cryptocurrency exchanges to freeze funds or prevent transactions related to people exercising their right to protest peacefully.

15\ A crowd funding initiative by amongst others @BTCsessions and @FossGregfoss that uses bitcoin quickly sprang up as an alternative and collected bitcoin worth millions of dollars from donators from all over the world in a few weeks.

16\ Because of bitcoin's unique decentralized qualities, as described above, no government or other entity was able to prevent these donations or cease the funds.

17\ And because bitcoin funds are secured by cryptography, it is possible to hand someone the "secret" (private keys) that gives access to the funds on a piece of paper.

That is exactly how the bitcoin donations are being distributed to truckers right now ⬇️

18\ Now what if these donations were sent using some altcoin running on cloud servers because the transactions were cheaper and faster?

There's no reason to assume government ceasure, as is happening in #Canada, will stop at bank accounts and centralized crypto exchanges.

19\ Both the cloud providers and the companies behind altcoin projects themselves can be pressured into freezing funds or halting operations altogether by threatening them with fines or incarceration.

20\ #Bitcoin has no CEO that can be thrown in jail. There is no cloud operator that runs the majority of its network nodes.

The revolution that was started by Satoshi Nakamoto"s introduction of bitcoin revolves around taking control of money out of the hands of governments.

21\ The 1974 Nobel Prize laureate Friedrich von Hayek already understood this.

In 2008/09, Satoshi Nakamoto combined existing concepts and technologies to realize that vision.

22\ The tradeoffs that come with using a distributed infrastructure that is inherently less efficient than a centralized database, are only logical and worthwhile if it yields a system that can't be stopped or censored by one single entity.

23\ The vast majority of the altcoin space uses the mere semblance of decentralization to run the largest online casino in the world while using their vast marketing budgets to give it the appearance of the next generation of decentralized technology (Web3).

24\ The simple question for everyone interested in this space is: "Do you want to spend your money, time and energy on enabling the buying and selling of drawings of monkeys for millions of dollars, or do you want to be part of the separation of state and money?"

25\ And one additional simple question for anyone who disagrees with the #FreedomConvoy2022 truckers and therefore thinks it's great the government ceases their property: "Will you still feel that way when in the future your views and values suddenly get labeled as unacceptable?"

Supplemental 1\

Don't underestimate shitcoin marketing. Even governments fall for the nonense of centralized blockchains.

https://twitter.com/AaronWi38550500/status/1497053241015738371?s=19