Ethereums Shanghai update opens a loophole in crypto

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This ideological battle and the strength of animosity between bitcoin evangelists and their detractors means that it is difficult to have a nuanced discussion about the industry, and both sides have become entrenched in their positions.

According to de Vries, it would be perfectly possible, from a technical point of view, for Bitcoin to follow in the footsteps of the Ethereum network. Bitcoin could switch to PoS, no problem, he says. But it is a social challenge.

De Vries is often attacked by bitcoiners, who claim he is incentivized by his central bank affiliation to criticize bitcoin, that his data is incorrect, and that he ignores the nuances in bitcoins’ relationship with the world. ‘environment.

Bitcoiners have locked horns with environmental charities. On March 23, Greenpeace activists unveiled an art installation named Satoshi’s Skull, an allusion to pseudonymous bitcoin creator Satoshi Nakamoto. Standing 11 feet tall, the skull is decorated with old motherboards, its eye sockets glow red, and chimneys shoot smoke from the crown. The facility was intended to represent the dual contribution of crypto-mining to carbon emissions and e-waste, says Rolf Skar, campaign manager at Greenpeace USA. But the skull was quickly appropriated by bitcoin supporters on Twitter, who described the skull as metal and badass. Some have used it as their new profile picture.

The reaction was predictable, but disappointing, says Skar. It’s not surprising, but it’s a bad look to trivialize these very real issues.

The artist who designed the sculpture, Benjamin Von Wong, also suffered some of the backlash. On March 25, he posted a Twitter thread saying he had revised his black-and-white rating after conversations with bitcoiners. But he also pointed to the forces that stand in the way of productive debate: There are people on both sides who believe the other is naively optimistic, misguided and misinformed, he wrote.

The Satoshi skull, which is touring US cities, is part of a larger Greenpeace campaign called Change the Code, Not the Climate, which aims to push for changes to the Bitcoin codebase that would reduce the network broadcasts. Skar says the intention is to keep fossil fuel power plants from coming back to life, thanks to bitcoin, but Bendiksen calls the effort a smear campaign.

Both sides also accuse the other of bad faith misrepresentation of facts and data. The Greenpeace campaign, say Pritzker and Bendiksen, is funded in part by Chris Larsen, founder of Ripple, a company interested in promoting XRP, a cryptocurrency that was launched as a direct competitor to bitcoin. But by the same token, Howson says, the case for bitcoin mining is often based on data provided by the Bitcoin Mining Council, a coalition of mining companies led by Michael Saylor, CEO of MicroStrategy, a company with hundreds of millions. dollars invested in bitcoins.

The standoff is compounded by ideological opposition to PoS among bitcoiners, separate from environmental considerations. Some find the idea of ​​tampering with Satoshi Nakamoto’s original invention unthinkable, and others, like Bendiksen and Pritzker, believe that PoS introduces a greater risk of centralization and censorship and therefore poses a threat to the founding principles of cryptos. PoS is essentially the fiat system, says Pritzker, because whoever has the gold makes the rules. For this reason, Bendiksen explains, bitcoiners will never accept change.

Any attack on bitcoin is an attack on their morals, their values, and often their net worth. It makes everything personal, Von Wong told WIRED. Because most people don’t see themselves as inherently evil, they feel misjudged and misunderstood, which is a terrible place to start a conversation.

The result is a situation in which both sides hurl insults across the void but register no legitimate or well-meaning complaints. Any information that could be used to discredit the opposition is also captured. And Von Wong fears becoming a piece himself.

The hardest part of being at the center of controversy is feeling like a chess piece, he says. I don’t feel like I can speak freely in public without someone, somewhere, taking what I’m saying out of context and trying to use it against the opposite side.

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