Ethereum is so enthusiastic about hard forks (or in ETH speak, upgrades) that they have the difficulty bomb which works like the debt ceiling. It's necessary to do a hard fork/upgrade every so often.

Meanwhile bitcoin is so against hard forks/upgrades that they can basically only do soft forks and currently do that by a 90% voting agreement by miners.

Bitcoin can not even increase the blocksize, the sure as hell aren't going to change the emission. Some day far down the line the block subsidy might be low enough that lots of miners go dark. At that point they'll need to choose between 21 million bitcoins and network security.

So the personal beliefs of users decide the technical future of the project. Personal beliefs and culture can change rapidly, or become overshadowed by new users.

It just means that Bitcoin is only unchangeable because of the current whims of current users - nothing fundamental.

Humans decide the technical future of every project. The difference is which specific humans, how many, how they are selected, how they are incentivized etc.

I disagree with this - bitcoin is advertised as mathematically unbreakable (which it currently practically is, on a technical level, due to the cryptography) - but this level of bulletproof security is promoted as extended to all properties of the blockchain - which isn't, on a technical level, true.

I disagree that's how it's promoted. You could make this argument about any piece of software (change the code to make it insecure, now look at the security hole!).

If someone were to do this with Bitcoin, users can decide whether to use the old chain or the new chain. Unlike a centralized service, no individual (or even group of people) can prevent you from using the version of the network you and your peers want to participate in.

> Bitcoin is only unchangeable because of the current whims of current users

Is this different than saying that the US laws that we admire are held up by the whims of the electorate?

But yes, I guess nothing fundamental because software is malleable, and even then there's still has to be the decision to treat it like it has value. A gold bar or dollar bill means nothing either if the whims of all humans were to change.

Agreed.

In my view the Bitcoin community has only further entrenched their position as they taken on new users in a toxic Eternal September.

It was never meant to be fundamentally unchangeable.

All blockchains are controlled by rough consensus. There's already like half a dozen Bitcoin forks in the wild (Bitcoin Cash, BSV, etc). When Bitcoin Cash forked off from the main chain in 2017, the community ultimately decided which chain was the "legitimate" one.

Of course Bitcoin could decide to increase the issuance. In doing so, however, it would inevitably lead to a fork (with the 21M holdouts in one camp and the inflationists in another) and the community would ultimately need to decide which one to support.

Good explanation.

Imo the block size wars was the beginning of the end for Bitcoin. I chose the chain most hashed and it's only now that I realize that Bitcoin gave up on growing and improving at that point.

Bch is a joke, PoW just doesn't work unless you're the biggest game in town. BTC is shackled to staying incredibly conservative.

I agree with all of this - but the conclusion I reach is that proponents of Bitcoin are lying when they say it's unchangeable and certainly deflationary, or digital gold. It's changeable if people want it to change.

Anything is technically possible. In reality no one wants this to change the limit on the 21 million number and any proposal to modify this particular aspect of Bitcoin will get shot down immediately.

Lying would mean they know what they're saying isn't true. Practically speaking it's completely true.

You could also increase the 21M cap through soft-fork and the existing chain wouldn't have to split.

> it stands to reason

No it doesn't. You're comparing something with no advantage to the people who are invested in Bitcoin to something which is meant to objectively improve Ethereum and a majority can agree upon.

I always heard it explained that it's full-node wallet users who tend to control the future direction of a blockchain, not just those invested or mining.

I would like the 21M limit to be increased so I can stand to make some profit mining! Currently that's impossible for me. I'd like it to change.

The lead eth developer Vitalik has an excellent blog post addressing what it takes to fork a blockchain- https://vitalik.ca/general/2021/03/23/legitimacy.html

The key takeaway is that yes, it's ultimately just controlled by majority agreement between users.