Truth Bitcoin is nothing more than Digital Gold to me now that KYC has taken it over.

It was very foreseeable that the KYC takeover would happen. The intended Bitcoin use will now concentrate in the freedom pockets of the world. So, it's about continuing to use it the free way wherever we can and Jeff's encouragement is welcome! Also, you can't prohibit using the Bitcoin chain in whatever way it enables ... and if that is bringing shitcoins there natively, Bitcoin has to survive this by doing what it does best - being better money. Some of these tokens may even enable cool freedom use cases, who knows. It's about us the people understanding Bitcoin and using it in the most beneficial free way. If we don't get it, we are not ready for freedom. Bitcoin imposing rules on how it should be used is the same statist attitude as usual. "Papa authority please help and make the dimwits respect the law that keeps society safe."

KYC has literally nothing to do with my post… And there is no use case for non monetary data on chain - except fiat profit at network security expense. Satoshi himself said so during the bitdns debate in 2010. When people were trying to put domain names on bitcoin for profit he pushed back: “Piling every proof-of-work quorum system in the world into one dataset doesn't scale. Bitcoin and BitDNS (non monetary data) can be used separately. Users shouldn't have to download all of both to use one or the other. BitDNS users may not want to download everything the next several unrelated networks decide to pile in either.” He wasn’t making rules for how bitcoin should be used or censoring domains on bitcoin… he was making the obvious observation that bloating the chain with data doesn’t scale and is a security risk. The chain is now growing 2.2 gb a week while ssd prices skyrocket. Over half of that data are non monetary since Cores controversial update! Just because you don’t know how to run a node, doesn’t mean you shouldn’t understand how this is inherently destructive to a decentralized network.

I see your point and principally agree. But Bitcoin currently is built in a way that made room for other use cases and tokens. If this is not supposed to be, why wasn't that window closed forever? My point is that you can't blame people for doing what's possible to do and what they find useful, and then want to reign them in to your vision. May it be the intended one by the all-wise creator or not. It would be a huge pity if Bitcoin failed. But if we humans aren't ready for freedom, then we aren't ready. You can't fight for freedom with violence ... again and again.

That’s a logical fallacy - the is-ought fallacy. Just because something is possible doesn’t mean it ought to be permitted. A lock pick can open your door. That doesn’t obligate you to leave it unlocked. There’s also a secondary Slippery Slope / False Dilemma buried in the closing: framing BIP-110 as “violence” and “reigning people in” (as if a standardness/relay policy is somehow coercive force rather than nodes choosing what they relay). It is literally the opposite if you actually run a node and understand how decentralized consensus works… BIP-110 doesn’t prevent anyone from doing anything on-chain. It changes what honest nodes choose to forward. It’s returning bitcoin to a state from before - a decentralized monetary network that actively attempts to prevent chain bloat for security via node consensus.

Thanks! What you're saying about the node relay policy makes sense ... that node operators choose the preferred way forward and see which version prevails. That is indeed not coercion, no. And here again I'd wish that people choose freedom. Some may prefer the runes, token path, maybe because they think there's a chance to solve the privacy issue. I'll follow the debate. You are also right, I don't run a node yet. But I'll soon go about this seriously and will have a closer look at that BIP-110 discussion then. As to the "ought-to" and "should", as a former environmental lawyer myself and from the experience I gathered, I would like us to be able to live with as little regulation as possible, by educating ourselves to understand freedom at its core ... that means beyond mind and matter. The more we got that down, the less regulation we will need. So, I don't say lockpicking should be permitted. But if we don't understand freedom and hence don't live in abundance, locks will be picked because it's possible. Inner work + education (root) over laws and regulation (surface) is what I'm saying.

The issue with viewing it as a lawyer is that laws are based on authority and a centralized fiat model. A law is based on the citizens trusting select individuals to determine what is “moral” or justified rule. These people are paid to make the laws (not evil just pointing out its centralization at its core). This is not how consensus works. Bitcoin’s network is based on time and energy - not centralized authority. Its security is based on the good faith of node runners to validate blocks and determine what goes into those blocks. There is no trust needed. So thats great that you are considering running a node! It’s a lot of work these days (takes like 3 days to download the chain - which is part of the issue here). I really don’t care which client is run, it’s great if there are more nodes and I prefer that Core isnt run, but people need to understand that bip110 is really the only implementation that is addressing the chain bloat problem. There is a lot of misunderstanding of what it does… you’ll see this in realtime once you try and upload the timechain lol 😂 it’s growing at a historic rate - like 2.2 GB a week!

Mh, some good food for thought here 🙏🏼 I guess things will indeed become more vivid once I run a node. An unlimited data connection would be a requirement to start with it looks like :D These digital governance models are actually really interesting to study ... thanks for your elaborate responses!