LETTER #36: You can't "change its code."
Bitcoin is to be used by the billions NOT to be controlled by the billionaires.
On Monday, climate activist groups such as Greenpeace USA announced to start off a campaign to change the code of Bitcoin so that it moves away from the energy-intensive Proof of Work system.
That’s because they think that Bitcoin is bad for the environment and a move to Proof-of-stake will make it 99% greener.
For those of you who don’t like to read a lot: It won’t happen. They are in it for a big disappointment.
Those - like me - who prefer a detailed answer should continue reading further.
Proof of Work is an energy-intensive system. No doubt. I ask you when did using energy become a bad thing? When did it become a thing to criticize something because it uses energy? By that means, criticizing refrigerator companies ( or anything that uses energy) should be the norm. But it isn’t.
Thanks to PoW that Bitcoin is the most secure and decentralized network on a floating rock in space we call Earth. Thanks to PoW that no company or a billionaire can forcibly change the code of Bitcoin.
They want Bitcoin to use the Proof of Stake method to verify transactions. Under this method, a user with more coins has more authority than someone with fewer coins. Tell me how it is NOT different from our current financial system which is in the hands of a few? It will totally undermine the invention of Bitcoin.
Bitcoin was invented to have a fairer financial system where
: the wealth of the masses can’t be stolen through inflation by the few.
: a person with more coins can’t control the entire network.
: everyone controls the fruits of their labor.
: nobody can confiscate someone else’s funds with force.
: nobody can freeze your funds.
Those shilling for the PoS, tell me how can it be achieved under their proposed system?
Satoshi says in the whitepaper, “Any proposed change to this core feature is highly unlikely to pass.”
Bitcoin miners continuously invest huge amounts of capital in ASIC machines to stay competitive. Do you think they will be willing to support such a change that will not only kick them out of the network but make all their investments go worthless as the ASIC machines can’t be used anywhere else?
In order for it to be successful, they would have to convince all the miners and node operators to let go of the old software and install the new one with changed code. Why on Earth would node operators - who have devoted their lives to Bitcoin - want to switch from PoW that assures security, decentralization, and a fairer financial system to PoS in which a few billionaires will decide what can be done in the network?
This campaign shows that these people who think they can easily change Bitcoin’s code have never read about the Blocksize Wars of 2017.
For those out of the loop, in 2017, a similar attack was made on Bitcoin. Back then, a lot of exchanges, companies, even miners wanted to increase the size of Bitcoin’s block size so that more transactions can take place. The problem with this proposal was that it would have become almost impossible for a normal individual to download Bitcoin’s blockchain and hence, run its node. As a result, the network would have become centralized as only big corporations could run its node.
But it didn’t happen. Those running the nodes simply rejected the proposal and kept running the software with unchanged code.
Therefore, you can’t change Bitcoin as long as you can’t convince everyone who is running its node to download the “changed-code” Bitcoin software and delete the real one.
Again, it won’t happen. You are just wasting your money and time, period.
FINAL THOUGHT….
The Trudeau government is working hard on Bill C-11 which, if passed, will throw free speech, if we have any, in the gutter.
Came upon your article on Twitter; Nicely written!
I think it's also worth noting that part of Bitcoin's energy usage comes from energy that would otherwise be wasted. So doing a one to one comparison on its energy use wrt time is flawed.
Secondly, Bitcoin incentivises the moves towards renewables because there's just more room for them to get cheaper than fossil fuels. Just recently a new report came out from CNBC that Jack, Elon, etc. are building solar farms to power mining.
Like you said: it's not fair to rebute something just because it consumes more energy (we ought to go back to using candles if that was the case), but beyond that, Bitcoin may be using a fair amount of energy, but that energy usage largely isn't translating into worsening the climate crisis.