If past is indeed prologue, BSV users upset with Dr. Craig Wright\u2019s ongoing legal actions need to think long and hard before forking the chain into the great unknown.<\/p>\n
Bitcoin expert Joshua Henslee (@cryptoAcorns) has a new YouTube video titled On Forking Bitcoin in which he addresses a number of issues currently animating discussion in the BSV ecosystem. These issues include some vocal dissatisfaction with Dr. Wright\u2019s efforts to use the courts to facilitate the return of over 111,000 Bitcoin tokens that were stolen following a hack of his computer in February 2020.<\/p>\n
Wright is seeking to compel developers of the BTC, BCH, BCH ABC and BSV blockchains to acknowledge their fiduciary responsibility in assisting the return of stolen assets to their rightful owners. This has caused consternation in some crypto corners, as it flies in the face of the belief that Bitcoin transactions are truly immutable and thus immune to the edicts of courts, governments or any other central authorities.<\/p>\n
Henslee\u2019s video opens with the question of whether the judicial system is currently capable of addressing questions involving the ownership of digital assets. Within the Bitcoin community itself, there\u2019s fierce debate over whether possession of a private key equates directly to ownership of a digital asset, a question that becomes even thornier given the \u201chuge gap\u201d in judicial understanding of the digital currency sector.<\/p>\n
Henslee expresses unease at the potential fallout from allowing a court to direct miners to reroute certain UTXOs to an individual who\u2019s demonstrated ownership of purloined assets. Once that cat\u2019s out of the digital bag, what\u2019s to stop governments from seizing assets from critics of their policies or actions?<\/p>\n
Yet Henslee acknowledges that without some judicial recourse for victims of theft or fraud, chances are slim that Bitcoin will ever break out of its current digital ghetto and attain its deserved status as a truly global currency. There\u2019s no Solomonic solution that is likely to be praised by all parties with a stake (direct or indirect) in the outcome.<\/p>\n
Manslaughter: Not murder, but still a crime<\/strong><\/p>\n From the day Wright launched his legal action to regain his stolen coins, his motives have been assailed by certain vocal factions of CryptoVille, including many of the BTC\/BCH developers who are being asked to facilitate the return of Wright\u2019s assets. Ironically, it\u2019s the actions these same developers have taken over the years that may lead to a token-retrieval scenario that both the courts and the general public will recognize as legitimate. Block head Jack Dorsey recently established a legal fund for the centralized protocol developers that have a fiduciary responsibility to the networks users.<\/p>\n Wright\u2019s recent legal victory over Ira Kleiman revived discussion of Bitcoin\u2019s nLockTime function and how it can be combined with smart contract scripts to secure Bitcoin in an automated trust, like the Tulip Trust in which Wright is said to have secured the vast stores of Bitcoin that Satoshi mined in Bitcoin\u2019s early days. Such an arrangement allows the token holder to intentionally discard the private keys to further secure the assets against unauthorized access.<\/p>\n Henslee notes that many of the centralized protocol developers currently resisting Wright\u2019s request for help in recovering his stolen coins were among those who made changes to Bitcoin\u2019s original protocol following Satoshi Nakamoto\u2019s post-2011 absence from the spotlight. Some of those changes invalidated nLockTime, rendering unspendable any coins that happened to be lying in this state of suspended animation.<\/p>\n With BSV having restored the Bitcoin protocol to its original state, nLockTime functionality remains intact. Assuming Wright is able to regaining control of these coins, Wright\u2019s ability to spend the BSV coins\u2014and demonstrate that the hashes and UTXOs are the same on the other chains\u2014would give a major boost to his ownership claims.<\/p>\n Henslee says Wright will have a strong argument to make in court that the code changes made by the BTC\/BCH developers have effectively seized property belonging to others. Henslee said it doesn\u2019t matter if this misappropriation was achieved accidentally\u2014it\u2019s why the legal system recognizes manslaughter as distinct from murder\u2014because at the end of the day, actions have consequences, requiring other actions to remedy the damage done.<\/p>\n Bitcoin Spork Vision<\/strong><\/p>\n Regardless of the righteousness of his cause, Wright\u2019s numerous legal cases have left some in the BSV community frustrated. These individuals see Wright\u2019s ongoing presence in the courts as a distraction from the focus that should be on BSV\u2019s technical prowess, resulting in a loss of liquidity that has discouraged more developers from giving the chain a proper look.<\/p>\n Some of these restless BSV\u2019ers are now publicly musing about forking off into a new Craig-free chain that would retain all the best bits of BSV while hopefully purging itself of its negative PR and legal baggage.<\/p>\n Henslee says he sympathizes with some of this group\u2019s concerns\u2014although he notes that the coordinated shunning of BSV by exchanges such as Binance and Coinbase bears much of the liquidity blame\u2014but he suggests these individuals may want to think twice before they make a decision they can\u2019t undo.<\/p>\n As Henslee notes, forking requires a significant supply of hash power behind it to work. When BSV left BCH behind, Calvin Ayre was able to bring his significant resources to bear to support the fledgling chain. Who will support a new BSV fork to the degree necessary to ensure malicious actors can\u2019t treat the chain like their personal re-org rec room?<\/p>\n Henslee also warns forking fans to recognize that the experience of previous forks doesn\u2019t bode well for increasing the number of developers working on the technology. Forks split communities, forcing developers to choose sides. Time is wasted tweaking products to conform to a new reality, time that would be better spent innovating. Many apps don\u2019t survive these distractions.<\/p>\n In short, Henslee\u2019s view is that the net negatives of a fork vastly outweigh the potential positives, particularly given the additional tweaks the software tends to undergo along the way.<\/p>\n Henslee claims that there is no current version of Bitcoin that reflects what Satoshi created\u2014and that includes BSV (which still retains the difficulty adjustment algorithm and ForkID changes that were introduced into BCH back in the day). Henslee argues that this is the result of every developer\u2019s self-assured insistence that Satoshi got it wrong and that significant alterations to Bitcoin\u2019s original code are required to right these wrongs.<\/p>\n Henslee claims every other digital currency introduced after Bitcoin\u2019s arrival is based on the assumption that Satoshi built something that couldn\u2019t scale. BSV, which most closely resembles the original Bitcoin protocol, has disproven this assumption. As such, Henslee cautions that would-be forkers should look carefully before they leap, lest they discover too late that their new development team feels the \u2018S\u2019 in \u2018New BSV\u2019 should stand for SegWit.<\/p>\n