If you zoom out a little, and consider that bitcoin has the potential to fundamentally change the way human beings store and exchange value forever...
A censorship resistant, decentralized, digital ledger that no-body can control or alter.
That's an innovation that has mind-boggling implications. If bitcoin is truly that (and I believe it can be), then it needs to be bullet proof. It needs to be attacked over and over again from every possible vector, and needs to survive each of these attacks and get stronger with every one that fails.
It needs to survive government censorship, PR disasters, fraudulent exchanges, corporate takeover....etc.
From where I'm sitting, segwit2x is the single most dangerous attack that bitcoin has faced so far. It's an attack from within. Maybe even a well intentioned one. If segwit2x succeeds, then bitcoin has been vulnerable at the governance level all along, and the NYA is merely an exploit to the vulnerability. The experiment was grand, but it has failed.
If, as I hope, segwit2x fails to take over bitcoin, then we are much closer to a truly censorship resistant ledger, and humanity is all the better for it.
When I think about things from this angle, I'm almost grateful for the NYA. I want to know, sooner rather than later, wether or not control over bitcoin can be achieved by a dozen people with mixed intentions, sitting in a hotel room somewhere. If they succeed, I'm not mad at them, I'm just deeply sad about the death of a beautiful experiment. If they fail, then I'm grateful that they tried, and made bitcoin stronger.
Submitted October 01, 2017 at 12:56PM by kabuks http://bit.ly/2xSzzF3
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