Quote from: d5000 on July 30, 2024, 06:31:52 PM

Some Bitcoiners seem to be enthusiastic about plans by politicians to buy or hold big amounts of Bitcoin as part of a "strategic reserve". In particular, Kennedy's announcement that in the (extremely unlikely) case he wins the US election he could buy up to four million Bitcoins as a strategic reserve.

I don't like this idea for the following reason:

States holding such a big amount could interfere too much into Bitcoin's power equilibrium.

Let's see the following hypothetical scenario:

- The US buys 1-2 million BTC, other states/central banks like the ECB, China and India follow, and together they hold let's say 5-7 million (about 25%-35% of all existing Bitcoins).
- Now the FATF sets up a new "recommendation" that a blacklist for "sanctioned" Bitcoin addresses (like those already implemented in Tether and other stablecoins) would be desirable.
- As almost all states obey the FATF's guidelines, together they pressure Bitcoin Core team to implement a blacklist for "sanctioned" Bitcoin addresses which miners have to obey, or alternatively build an own Bitcoin client with a modified protocol.
- This would of course need a hard fork. But they have a lot of coins, so they can increase pressure by threatening to sell all Bitcoins on the chain which does not follow the hard fork. This has a precedent: it's what Ethereum did when they pressured for the hard fork rewinding the TheDAO hack in 2016.

A similar scenario was already discussed for ETFs. But ETFs would never hold so many coins as some are desiring for states/governments to hold, and also their customers could react, so for ETFs I don't see this danger. Up to 1 million, even 2 millions of BTC hold be states/governments/central banks would still not be something to be worried about. But if all bigger states try to buy millions, then it could become really dangerous.

I don't think Bitcoin would "die" in such a scenario, but I think it could lose a lot of value and confidence. And the scenario is not that unlikely to be ignored.

What do you think? I added a poll also with an intermediate scenario like the one announced by Trump, which would lead to a couple of hundred thousands of BTC hold by states, but not millions.

I don't understand why some people think it's okay for the government to hold bitcoin. I don't see anything normal about it, because the amount of speculation and pressure will increase exponentially.

mck3nzie

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