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authorLuke Dashjr <luke-jr+git@utopios.org>2016-02-02 04:14:26 +0000
committerLuke Dashjr <luke-jr+git@utopios.org>2016-02-02 04:14:26 +0000
commit81741909838adc2e2c0f4d7f3c66f54a01e6e010 (patch)
tree1aa6a81750ebf720779e37350ef841681b4ab814
parentfe0870ed0630f663c6d2df8626780b5800241a56 (diff)
downloadbips-81741909838adc2e2c0f4d7f3c66f54a01e6e010.tar.xz
bip-biprevised: Add Rationale for defining of the economy
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@@ -53,6 +53,17 @@ A proposal is said to have achieved consensus if it has been open to discussion
===Rationale===
+How is the entire Bitcoin economy defined by people selling goods/services and holders?
+
+* For Bitcoin to function as a currency, it must be accepted as payment. Bitcoins have no value if you cannot acquire anything in exchange for them. If everyone accepting such payments requires a particular set of consensus rules, "bitcoins" are de facto defined by that set of rules - this is already the case today. If those consensus rules are expected to broaden (as with a hard-fork), those merchants need to accept payments made under the new set of rules, or they will reject "bitcoins" as invalid. Holders are relevant to the degree in that they choose the merchants they wish to spend their bitcoins with, and could also as a whole decide to sell under one set of consensus rules or the other, thus flooding the market with bitcoins and crashing the price.
+
+Why aren't <x> included in the economy?
+
+* Some entities may, to some degree, also be involved in offering goods and/or services in exchange for bitcoins, thus in that capacity (but not their capacity as <x>) be involved in the economy.
+* Miners are not included in the economy, because they merely *rely on* others to sell/spend their otherwise-worthless mined produce. Therefore, they must accept everyone else's direction in deciding the consensus rules.
+* Exchanges are not included in the economy, because they merely provide services of connecting the merchants and users who wish to trade. Even if all exchanges were to defect from Bitcoin, those merchants and users can always trade directly and/or establish their own exchanges.
+* Developers are not included in the economy, since they merely write code, and it is up to others to decide to use that code or not.
+
Why can the economic consensus veto a soft-fork?
* The group of miners is determined by the consensus rules for the dynamic-membership multi-party signature (for Bitcoin, the proof-of-work algorithm), which can be modified with a hard-fork. Thus, if the same conditions required to modify this group are met in opposition to a soft-fork, the miner majority supporting the soft-fork is effectively void because the economic consensus can decide to replace them with another group of would-be miners who do not support the soft-fork.