{"id":2392,"date":"2025-01-29T18:16:32","date_gmt":"2025-01-29T18:16:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/digkrypton.com\/index.php\/2025\/01\/29\/forget-about-the-strategic-bitcoin-reserve-for-a-moment-mining-censorship-is-back\/"},"modified":"2025-01-29T18:16:32","modified_gmt":"2025-01-29T18:16:32","slug":"forget-about-the-strategic-bitcoin-reserve-for-a-moment-mining-censorship-is-back","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/digkrypton.com\/index.php\/2025\/01\/29\/forget-about-the-strategic-bitcoin-reserve-for-a-moment-mining-censorship-is-back\/","title":{"rendered":"Forget About The Strategic Bitcoin Reserve For A Moment \u2014 Mining Censorship Is Back"},"content":{"rendered":"

Follow Aaron on <\/em>Nostr<\/a> or <\/em>X<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

The news got buried in part due to Trump\u2019s inauguration and subsequent rumblings of a Strategic Bitcoin Reserve (SBR), but developer b10c recently published research<\/a> showing that F2Pool \u2014 a mining pool representing ~11% of hash power on the Bitcoin network \u2014 is censoring OFAC-sanctioned transactions\u2026\u00a0again<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In case you don\u2019t know what this means: the US Department of the Treasury\u2019s Office of Foreign Asset Control (OFAC) maintains a list of sanctioned entities, including a number of Bitcoin addresses; it\u2019s illegal to do business with these entities under US law. It\u2019s actually unclear if this means miners cannot include transactions to and from these addresses in blocks they produce \u2014 but F2Pool appears to be rather safe than sorry.<\/p>\n

Now, as long as it\u2019s just F2Pool applying this policy, this is not really an issue. Some transactions will be delayed by about ten minutes or so, once in a while, but that\u2019s about it.<\/p>\n

If more pools start doing it, the delays will get longer and more frequent \u2014 but still not terrible. Not even if it\u2019s a majority of pools.<\/p>\n

The real issue will arise if a majority of mining pools not only censors transactions, but also refuses to build on top of blocks that do include these transactions. If this were to happen, these transactions wouldn\u2019t confirm at all anymore\u2026 not for as long as these mining pools remain a majority. Bitcoin would no longer be censorship-resistant.<\/p>\n

I can\u2019t really fault F2Pool for adopting their policy. Although I would much prefer it if no mining pools censor, we unfortunately live in a world where even open source software developers\u00a0may face prison time<\/a> for enabling users to transact freely.<\/p>\n

Rather than flirting with an SBR, it would be great if the new Trump administration first just stopped such state attacks on Bitcoin.<\/p>\n

This article is a <\/em>Take<\/a><\/em>. Opinions expressed are entirely the author’s and do not necessarily reflect those of BTC Inc or Bitcoin Magazine.<\/em><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Follow Aaron on Nostr or X. The news got buried in part due to Trump\u2019s inauguration and subsequent rumblings of a Strategic Bitcoin Reserve (SBR), but developer b10c recently published research showing that F2Pool \u2014 a mining pool representing ~11% of hash power on the Bitcoin network \u2014 is censoring OFAC-sanctioned transactions\u2026\u00a0again. In case you […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":2393,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-2392","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-bitcoin"},"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/digkrypton.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2392","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/digkrypton.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/digkrypton.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digkrypton.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2392"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/digkrypton.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2392\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digkrypton.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2393"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/digkrypton.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2392"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digkrypton.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2392"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digkrypton.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2392"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}