Quote from: btcjoe99 on Today at 01:30:51 PM

Quote from: nosferatu8701 on February 26, 2022, 12:59:09 PM

I read this article today that talks about the possibility of bitcoin censorship.

Post this, I had some fundamental questions regarding how the bitcoin network works. Would appreciate if someone could help me understand this.

As per this article: https://tftc.io/martys-bent/issue-1170,

Quote

If Russians are able to get transactions included in blocks alongside individuals from countries who are still connected to SWIFT, it sort of makes the chord cutting mute. In an attempt to prevent this from happening it is totally possible that the US government and other NATO governments would try to thrust regulations on the mining industry to keep a blacklist of Russian bitcoin addresses at all times and never mine a block with a transaction that is sent from any of those addresses lest they want to be subjected to harsh punishments for violating sanctions. Worse yet, they could even try to force a whitelist of approved addresses tied to the identities of individuals and make it so mining pools are only allowed to interact with those addresses.

Questions:

How do transactions get included in a block?
Are miners responsible for deciding which transactions are included in a block? I thought miners work towards finding the solution for the block.
If so, the block must be already created ? Who created this block ?
When I send a bitcoin transaction, does it get sent to a miner ? How does my client (such as electrum) know whom to send the transaction to?
What other parameters are taken into consideration while including a transaction into a block for eg. Fee? If so, is it possible that Russian bitcoin addresses can give an incredibly large fee to incentivise miners to include the transaction?
How would the government know that a USA miner would pick up the block which contains a russian address transaction? What if the block is won by someone in Australia? Can Russia mine their own blocks and add to the Bitcoin network?

Apologies if my questions are too basic. If there are reading materials that explain in detail how the Bitcoin network works relating to some of the questions I posted above, I'd appreciate it if you can point me in that direction.

This is making not much sense. the only place i can place "russia" towards some addresses is on a specific binance deposit wallet like https://glasschain.org/btc/wallet/73871491
this one aparently is for russian clients. BUT ironically, ukranian too.

sending Bitcoin around is not a big deal. Cashing it out is. The Sanctions can easily just be inforced on banking level.

Russia also is not a little nation. If Bitcoin would be a serious tool to get around sanctions, we talk here hundreds of billions, probably shooting bitcoin over the 1 million dollar per coin mark and staying there.

lets not lose ourselves in speculation.

$1M/Bitcoin would make life better for countries having energy sources like Russia. Have their own mining farm to pick their transactions wil be a top priority for countries planning to use Bitcoin. Getting around the sanction will not be a problem anymore even if there is a list of Russian BTC addresses to block. Aiming for this kind of control over the BTC network is not possible. If it is and will worked against Russia, people will lose trust to BTC.