Thread by @renepickhardt

Dear @greenpeace. You didn't address me directly with your campaign

However the demand of a code change makes me - as a developer - feel addressed

Despite being sure that your campaign is more about seeking attention than dialogue I feel the urge to reply to your demands:

1/11

I'd first like to recall that - according to @stlouisfed and many others - money has three functions

First: Money is a store of value.
Second: Money is a unit of account.
Third: Money is a medium of exchange.

Source: stlouisfed.org/education/econ…

2/11

Thus It is my understanding that the value of money is directly connected to people accepting it.

It is my understanding that this is true for #Bitcoin in the same way as it is true for the Norwegian Krona, the Euro or any other currencies like the USD or the Turkish Lira

3/11

It is also my understanding that people will only spend large amounts for computing resources to mine #bitcoin if the very limited and over time declining #bitcoinmining reward is more valueable to them than the invested resources (depends on people to accept #bitcoin)

4/11

While like many other people who have an interest in #bitcoin I share your goal of protecting the environment I believe that:

A code change as you demand won't work for trivial reasons!

I'll lay these reasons out and tell you how you could proof me wrong if you read on:

5/11

Why won't changing the code work?

In 2017 people tried to change the code - in fact they did. What happened is that with a user activated softfork (techopedia.com/definition/329…) the users decided which version of the code is #bitcoin.

Again: People accept money (and its form)

6/11

Assume I took the time to create a code change that switches POW to POS and @jack, @elonmusk or @Fidelity advocated for this (like you very strangely propose)

It still seems very unlikely that users will use the update as they already accepted the current code as money!

7/11

How can you verify my claim? Just create a new fork of the code and create a new genesis block and offer it to people.

If the switch to POS is more useful to them than the existing #Bitcoin protocol then people would start accepting it as money and prefer it over #bitcoin

8/11

Let me conclude with a conjecture:

If your POS fork of Bitcoin was successfully being accepted the number of people accepting #bitcoin might decline. This would probably reduce its value and reduce the incentive for miners to spend resources on finding new coins...

9/11

... In that case the people accepting #bitcoin in their current form might have the incentive to also accept your demanded code change.

Long story short: in the spirit of open source development I propose you demonstrate that your demanded code change actually works!

10/11

Here are my 2 sats:

Proofing that something works seems btw much more #sustainable then just spending large sums of money on a #populist #marketing #campaign to demand something.

Many users changed their config file to #zeroBasefee because of our research (no campaign!) 11/11