[copumpkin]

It's different in that nobody can control it. Everything since bitcoin has had some form of leadership, including Ethereum, that can reasonably consistently get the network to fork and cause things to happen.

Bitcoin struggled for years to get a change adopted that most of the community thought was a good one, because nobody, not even Satoshi if they are still around, could change it.

[idiotsecant]

This is a silly argument. A community forks, not 'leadership'. The mechanism for forking the project is literally the same in both cases. Please describe what mechanism, ETH for example, includes that differentiates it from BTC in some way. This is just typical crypto tribalism and not rooted in a technical basis in any way.

[copumpkin]

I don't think it's silly. Network effects are why Parler failed and Twitter succeeded (thus far at least!), or betamax failed, etc. These things don't succeed or fail for technical reasons, and develop into distinctly different complex systems as a result of in some cases trivial technical differences (or even none) when the people using them are taken into account. And in the case of cryptocurrency in particular, the network effects (even outside of simple success or failure) are ultimately what make it secure/trustworthy or not. Some of the network effects are incentivized by technical measures, like mining rewards, but the stuff I'm talking about here is incidental.

The point is that the community/network/whatever that formed around bitcoin isn't centralized, so even for relatively "tame" changes like taproot, nobody could agree and it took years to merge regardless of technical merit. For better or worse and for a wide number of reasons I can speculate about, the equivalent social structure around Ethereum is far more centralized around the will of Vitalik and a handful of others, and they've demonstrated repeatedly (except around the ETC debacle which has mostly fizzled) that they can get the whole network to adopt even fairly complex and risky changes. Monero regularly forks, and even though it doesn't have a formalized leadership structure, is able to get changes rolled out. Same with ZEC and the electric coin company. Be it a single person, a pseudonym, an organization, or whatever, everything but bitcoin has forked repeatedly, which indicates a degree of central control (and thus central benefit, from the POV of regulators). In most cases outside of bitcoin, the founders have also enriched themselves enormously by remaining in control.

Contrast with the attempted forks of bitcoin: BCH was a huge mess and has been slowly fizzling out for years. BSV is a joke. Yes you could create a new fork today, but the whole point is that the difference isn't technical, it's a network. The network is partially technical (there are still lots of miners that won't mine your new fork) but is also cultural, and bitcoin users/miners/exchanges don't look up to the "dev team" as an authority. That's the key difference IMO. If you just focused on the technical you'd still be arguing that betamax was a better format.

[overthrow]

> Please describe what mechanism, ETH for example, includes that differentiates it from BTC in some way.

Difficulty bombs. https://twitter.com/level39/status/1554174864600227843

[codehalo]

Anyone can create a fork that removes the difficulty bomb. You just need people to use your fork.

[adastra22]

> Please describe what mechanism, ETH for example, includes that differentiates it from BTC in some way.

The presale.

[codehalo]

There is no "presale" in the Ethereum code.

[adastra22]

Why would that be relevant? It happened, that’s all that matters.

Edit: the context of this is the question of whether Ethereum is a security. The SEC has already ruled that it is, and the ruling came down to the fact that it had a presale (via the Howey test).

[codehalo]

It's not clear yet that the SEC has any jurisdiction over cryptocurrencies. At this point, their rulings are empty, and perhaps it will be decided in court.

[adastra22]

They have jurisdiction over securities. Things like the Howey test are used to determine if something is a security. Ethereum meets that bar. Whether bitcoin is a security isn’t so clear. Not by the Howey test at least.

[idiotsecant]

Maybe they don't have jurisdiction over crypto, but they definitely have jurisdiction over business entities with American presence. If they decide that you're accepting cash dollars for something security-like, it doesn't particularly matter what the underlying assets are, I don't think.

[headsoup]

I suppose so long as cryptocurrencies aren't interacting with the dollar markets at all that makes sense...

[dragonwriter]

> Please describe what mechanism, ETH for example, includes that differentiates it from BTC in some way.

On what legal basis do you insist that the differentiation must be by inclusion of a “mechanism”?

[idiotsecant]

Ok...do you have some other proposal by which we can judge systems that use mechanisms to do things?

[dragonwriter]

> Ok…do you have some other proposal by which we can judge systems that use mechanisms to do things?

The way we tend to judge whether things fit into legal categories is by the criteria specified in the controlling law (including relevant statutes, administrative regulations, and case law.)

While cryptocurrency enthusiasts are fond of an approach where the mechanism is all that is relevant, mechanisms may be all, part, or none of what is relevant in law. While only tangentially relevant here, an amusing example in securities law is what something is commonly called can be relevant, even decisive, because the definition of a ‘security’ in statute includes (but is not limited to) ‘any interest or instrument commonly known as a “security”’. 15 U.S. Code § 77b(a)(1)

[TylerE]

As I understand it, it’s because for whatevwr reason, they (well, not THEY, the then leadership) said years ago that Bitcoin was not a security, so they’re kinda stuck with that exception even if the current SEC disagrees with it.