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I have always taken the quote in the genesis block to be one of the few political actions or statements we can really accurately attribute to the person or persons known as Nakamoto. (The other being her/his/their abrupt near-total departure following the news that Gavin accepted a speaking engagement about Bitcoin at the CIA headquarters in Langley.) "The Times 03/Jan/2009 Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks" Of course, it serves the practical purpose of proving a lack of pre-mining with its knowledge of the headline in the Times of London, however this particular quote as well as "Israel prepares to send tanks and troops into Gaza" appears on the front page of the Times that day. Indeed, the bailout headline is in larger type—but set lower on the page. It is *not* the top story. I always took the use of this specific headline to indicate that the bitcoin blockchain stands somewhat in contrast to an inflationary system where the rules of the game can be fundamentally changed by central authority—after the ball is already in play (to extend the metaphor a bit). This to me was a real innovation - the "tyranny of the installed base" that gave us such headache-inducing statuses quo like Javascript, for once used actually as a defensive weapon against the nonconsensual redistribution of value in society (or at least one monetary system within society). There was basically no contention when various consensus-inducing changes were made to fix hard or serious bugs, so we’ve never really been faced with matters of opinion related to changes in the consensus code until now. All of the other events have been practical, avoid-imminent-destruction changes. While there are many implementation details to be hashed out and much discussion yet to unfurl, I would love to believe that the reason bitcoin has been so popular among its early adopters, so technically stable, and has developed such a brand image of reliability in the wider financial services ecosystem is because of its unerringly conservative approach to *any* non-essential change to its basic tenets. I am not advocating inaction. However, if we are to read anything at all into the editorial exercise of a publicity-shy developer, it seems that we as a community should err on the side of *not* modifying any part of the consensus rules unless inaction poses an *existential threat* to the entire blockchain s/he helped incite. Best, -jp -- Jeffrey Paul EEQJ [email protected] https://eeqj.com +1-800-403-1126 (America) +1-312-361-0355 (Worldwide) 5539 AD00 DE4C 42F3 AFE1 1575 0524 43F4 DF2A 55C2
