Recently, Tulip Trading Limited (TTL) reached a settlement with the Bitcoin Association in Dr. Craig Wright’s lawsuit arguing that blockchain developers owe legal duties towards users, which compel them to act in cases of stolen/lost coins. This week, BSV thought leader Joshua Henslee shared his interpretation of the settlement and what it means going forward.
Joshua Henslee’s thoughts on the TTL-BA settlement
Henslee begins by recapping the settlement. He tells us that as part of it, the Bitcoin Association has to develop and place software on its website which can be used to freeze/unfreeze coins.
Henslee predicts the response from many: that a settlement between the Bitcoin Association and an entity controlled by Dr. Wright means little because he has so much influence over it. However, in Henslee’s view, this isn’t accurate. The two are separate legal entities in law, and the settlement sets a precedent, showing the world how legal coin recovery can work.
Henslee believes most miners will comply when large operators like TAAL Distributed Information Technologies Inc. (CSE:TAAL | FWB:9SQ1 | OTC: TAALF) implement the software. He believes it will show two things; that public opinion doesn’t matter when legal orders come down, and home nodes don’t matter at all.
Why Satoshi made the node software open source
Henslee then pivots to talking about how Satoshi Nakamoto originally made the node software open source and how centralized BTC developers made radical changes to both the node software and the Bitcoin protocol. They stripped out necessary OPCODES, added features that fundamentally changed things (SegWit), and artificially limited the block size to 1MB.
Looking back, Henslee reminds us that Satoshi said Bitcoin was set in stone when he released it. He points out that changing what the creator did, even if you don’t like or understand it, means it’s no longer what he created. He feels this point should be obvious and that the logical conclusion is that BTC is no longer Bitcoin.
Being a career technician and coder, Henslee points out that there seem to be some fundamental misunderstandings about technical terms in the digital currency industry as a whole. He emphasizes that a protocol is a rule set and an implementation involves turning that rule set into code.
He also dismisses the idea that the price of a particular token decides the correct implementation of Bitcoin, pointing out that Dr. Wright has the copyright on the Bitcoin white paper, which lays out and defines the rule set. He notes that miners are allowed to make changes to the node software to gain a competitive advantage, but nobody is allowed to make fundamental protocol changes.
Wrapping up, Henslee says he believes this is a calculated step forward by Dr. Wright. He reiterates that it sets a legal precedent and that once large miners like TAAL implement the Bitcoin Association’s software, the rest will fall in line.
Analysis: Joshua Henslee calls it correct
Henslee regularly releases videos on happenings within the BSV ecosystem, so it’s no surprise that he has correctly interpreted this event. He’s right when he says that mere opinions don’t matter in the face of legal orders and when he predicts that profit-seeking legal entities like miners will comply with said orders.
In the real world, businesses, which is what miners are, don’t fight for ideological points, and they don’t risk their businesses defying court orders. They do what’s right for their shareholders, particularly if they’re publicly traded and legally bound to do so.
Once again, we’re seeing how the code is law narrative is a bad joke and how the actual law will overrule naive ideas like these time and time again.
Watch: The BSV Global Blockchain Convention presentation, BSV Blockchain: A World of Good
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