[Taek]

"By design, any changes to update the Bitcoin protocol need to be accepted by the miners with the majority of computing power - a.k.a. a hard fork."

This is incorrect and a common misunderstanding about Bitcoin. Hard forks require users to update, and it doesn't matter what the miners do. It also doesn't require a majority of users to upgrade, anyone who does upgrade will be on the new network, and anyone who does not upgrade will be on the old network.

Bitcoin (and other blockchains) are structured so that miners have as little power as possible. Pretty much the only thing miners can do in practice is choose to censor transactions, and that would be considered an attack. Networks have recourse like bricking all mining hardware, which typically acts as a sufficient deterrent to such attacks. Miners can also double-spend (a form of creative self-censorship), but the same network recourse applies.

In practice I don't think there are any examples of miners intentionally making a blockchain slower and more expensive. Miners pretty much always fit every possible transaction into every block, and any throughput restrictions are determined at the protocol level by protocol devs, not by miners.

[three_seagrass]

Semantics. Any hard fork that majority of miners do not accept and support becomes it's own branch and a separate crypto.

This is why I reference the bitcoin block size debacle. Bitcoin Cash was created as a hard fork that miners ultimately did not accept and is now just a dwindling alt coin.

[Taek]

It's not semantics, it's an incorrect worldview. Miners follow revenue. If miners had chosen to mine Bitcoin Cash, all that would have happened is they would have lost a ton of money competing with eachother while the miners who stayed on the original chain raked in hundreds of millions in additional profit.

Segwit2x had 80% hashrate support at the time it was proposed. It also had the support of most of the exchanges and major centralized players in the space. And yet, Segwit2x did not succeed.

Miners don't control Bitcoin.

[lifty]

As far as I remember miners favored the block increase while a critical mass of validating users didn’t.

[three_seagrass]

The distribution and difference in hash power speaks otherwise.

[lifty]

That’s not how it works. Miners follow the chain with the most users and highest economic share. Check this article if you want a more accurate depiction of how it went: https://bitcoinmagazine.com/articles/bitcoin-independence-da...

[three_seagrass]

That's over a year ago. Any remaining miners on bitcoin cash have jumped ship: https://bitcoinist.com/miners-abandon-bitcoin-cash-for-bitco...