Re:Fiat vs. Bitcoin
by ramontayag on Sunday October 29, 2017 @07:48AM
(#15578958)
Even if miners could change the rules and print more, do you think the users would continue to use it?
Why not? They use it today with the current coinbase. Why wouldn’t they use it tomorrow?
Some will stop using it, sure. And they probably have enough coin to affect the price short term.
But I’d argue that the majority of usage is now not for political/philosophical reasons but for economic ones.
How would the users blacklist the miners using the newer inflationary protocol? Is it even possible? By design, the longest blockchain wins, and that would be the one with the inflation if the majority of miners agreed.
> By design, the longest blockchain wins
The longest blockchain which follows the rules. If a chain does not follow the rules, it will be ignored by the nodes, even if it's the longest one. To change the rules, you have to update all nodes, not just the miners.
I’d be interested to know how many people would actually need to agree a fork that, say, didn’t halve the coinbase.
Also, of those, how many would give priority to the philosophical underpinnings of Bitcoin over making more money in the short/medium term.