[majinuub]

> Project direction controlled entirely by core devs and the centralised exchanges that bless their output as "bitcoin" regardless of the fact it directly contradicts the original consensus mechanism for the project and the changes implemented by said devs fundamentally broke the utility of the project.

Core devs and exchanges do not entirely control the project direction. Non-backwards compatible changes cannot be made to Bitcoin without the miners AND node operators adopting the new client. It takes the cooperation of the devs, miners, and node operators to make a hard fork. "The Blocksize War" by Jonathan Bier documents a bunch of failed hard fork attempts that were backed by a good number of devs, large miners, and large exchanges. They failed because the node operators were not on board.

[etherael]

I am aware of the official cover story. You appear to be unaware that it is a lie.

Look up the historical record. By what metric was the BTC chain allocated to the present by bitfinex? I'll give you a hint, hash power not only had nothing to do with it, it was explicitly said that it would be ignored in the announcement.

And reality flies in the face of what you just claimed, node operators had nothing to do with the metric. It's all just outright rigged.

[sshine]

> it was explicitly said that it would be ignored in the announcement

Can you elaborate or give references to how Bitfinex controls the Bitcoin blockchain in such a way that the gridlock between miners and core devs isn't what keeps Bitcoin conservative?

How is the network rigged in such a way that node operators have nothing to say? You're not referring to miner centralisation?

[etherael]

https://www.bitfinex.com/posts/223

Special notice to "The incumbent implementation (based on the existing Bitcoin consensus protocol) will continue to trade as BTC even if the B2X chain has more hashing power."

This is exactly the opposite of the way it is supposed to work according to the white paper. Before this announcement the majority of exchange volume was firmly in the camp of allocating the BTC ticker to whichever chain ended up having the most hashing power after the fork. If you work through the game theory afterwards, this means that;

1) if you want to be able to liquidate tokens to cover mining costs as what had heretofore been recognised as bitcoin, you will need to mine what is being rubber-stamped by the bitcoin core node client software as bitcoin, regardless of what the majority of hashpower is mining. What you rationally believe is the correct path is absolutely irrelevant. Want to pay your bills? Rubber-stamp BTC.

2) This is completely the opposite of what was outlined in the white paper and had been the status quo until this point.

3) This allocates absolute power to define the canonical chain tip to the people who have merge access to the official bitcoin core repo, a group no larger than seven people. Disagree with these people about what bitcoin is? You're wrong. It doesn't matter how many nodes you operate nor how much hashpower you have. They choose. You follow or gtfo.

4) A large part of these people had a direct fiscal interest in keeping Bitcoin uselessly crippled in order to promote their own commercial products which relied on that crippling to maintain competitive advantage.

5) Leaked emails from others highlighted the role intelligence agencies played in the campaign to keep bitcoin uselessly crippled. These emails contained unsubtle threats.

6) the power to define what BTC canonically is according to the supermajority of exchange volume was from this point on allocated by fiat to the core devs. Futures in the competitive chain were shorted into the ground on bitfinex and in the sabotaged chain pumped enormously using USDT.

7) Tether who is responsible for the issuance of USDT is just corporate dress for bitfinex. They're the same party.

8) USDT is acknowledged as fake fiat, official court documents highlight that it has nowhere near full backing in actual USD. Prior to the sabotage of 2017 daily exchange volumes of USDT were nearly irrelevant to even just BTC volume letalone the total, roughly five percent was regular. These days it is approaching three hundred percent of BTC trade volume on a regular basis. Just blatant outright wash trading to control the price of BTC using indisputably counterfeit USD.

9) Even with all the above, when BCH forked away from the sabotaged chain it pumped to 0.5 BTC. Plenty of people knew what was going on and how badly broken BTC had been. But in the face of widespread and constant market manipulation, BTC presently maintains a relatively dominant position. Nothing like the 95 percent plus it used to have before the sabotage, but still frequently 45 percent plus. Given it is utterly broken and sabotaged, this is completely ridiculous.

And last but not least bitfinex the party responsible for the above situation across the supermajority of centralised exchange volume is invested in blockstream the party responsible for the sabotage and hijack of the bitcoin core codebase and the forcible implementation upon it of the pants on head retarded idea that the chain ought to be permanently limited to roughly the throughput of a fax machine when the original plan was always for it to be competitive with large traditional payment providers like Visa and Mastercard and the exact mathematics for how this could be accomplished were published in 2009 and unsurprisingly check out just fine and these methods are now active on practically every other non sabotaged and broken blockchain in production usage.

The above isn't even a close to complete record of just how crooked the BTC situation is or its impact on the broader cryptosphere, but it highlights the core problem of fiat allocation of the title to whoever spits out the most counterfeit at the rotten heart of this horrid little saga that most people either aren't aware of or desperately try to ignore.