[darawk]

I partially agree, partially disagree. I think the way it would likely play out is not through committee voting or democracy, but rather through competitors cropping up and people voting with their feet.

If tomorrow the miners started freezing transactions and abusing their power, then 24 hours hence at least 10 new forks of Bitcoin would emerge with different hashing algorithms, all vying for dominance. And the next day another 100 would emerge. Which one would win? I don't know, but it'd likely converge relatively quickly.

Now, is this a bad outcome? Ya, it'd cause some short term disruption. No question about it. However, the miners know they can be routed around. And because they know that, they know they can't abuse their power without risking being cut out of the equation entirely. They are very strongly incentivized not to fuck with the network.

[freeloop3]

You didn't address my argument about alt coins taking over the top spot in such a scenario. When you say converge relatively quickly, relatively to what? How many days, weeks, months are we talking about? In that period of time where no one can spend or buy bitcoin, you don't see some other coin becoming dominant? Why not?