Bitcoin Q&A: Unstoppable Code
Channel: aantonop
Date: 2017-06-22

Governance and the market share of Bitcoin. It drops in a cyclical way when people become temporarily disillusioned and overwhelm other altcoins with exuberant attention they weren't really prepared for. When the spotlight shifts onto you, that's when you can't stumble. The adversarial attitude between cryptocurrencies. They all benefit from specialising to niches of trade-offs and design decisions in the ecosystem. Even failed experiments help evolution and teach us something. Being resistant to change is a differential feature, because it makes it robust against takeover. Even Bitcoin's own developers and miners can't force change from the inside. Bitcoin was designed to say 'unless everyone agrees, we're not changing a thing.' Political propaganda, economic, electrical, network-based attacks are always coming when it becomes this important to the world. "Unstoppable code" is for something that someone is trying to stop. "The only things worth printing are what somebody is trying to suppress; everything else is advertising / public relations." Silk Road, black market. PR disaster to Enterprise Ethereum Alliance, who will start saying "the technology behind Ethereum: smart contracts!" just as they did with Bitcoin. Trial by fire. Bitcoin is surviving because it can't be changed, because it is the unstoppable code.

Chapters
0:00 Regarding the stalemate and the way governance is going on with Bitcoin, do you think that could actually be jeopardizing Bitcoin's market cap? Because right now, its market cap dominance with respect to other altcoins has dropped below 70%
2:24 Being stuck in the status quo, being resistant to change, is a differentiable feature
4:10 Unstoppable code

This is part of a talk which took place at the Silicon Valley Bitcoin meetup on April 11th 2017 at the Plug and Play Tech Center (@PlugandPlayTC) in Sunnyvale, California: https://www.meetup.com/Silicon-Valley-Bitcoin-Users/events/233760417/

Watch the full talk here: https://youtu.be/i_wOEL6dprg

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The dangers of hard forks in protocol evolution - https://youtu.be/vxEHRvhJKvA
Are chain splits a governance failure? - https://youtu.be/2pJEEVEmEVw
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Initial coin offerings (ICOs) - https://youtu.be/Q5R8KuxV4A0
Cultural differences between Bitcoin & Ethereum - https://youtu.be/3UNC1AKc3Qk
Hard forks & the cultural mulligan - https://youtu.be/KT-7APasANI

Andreas M. Antonopoulos is a technologist and serial entrepreneur who has become one of the most well-known and well-respected figures in bitcoin.

Follow on Twitter: @aantonop https://twitter.com/aantonop
Website: https://antonopoulos.com/

He is the author of two books: “Mastering Bitcoin,” published by O’Reilly Media and considered the best technical guide to bitcoin; “The Internet of Money,” a book about why bitcoin matters.

THE INTERNET OF MONEY, v1: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Internet-Money-collection-Andreas-Antonopoulos/dp/1537000454/ref=asap_bc?ie=UTF8

MASTERING BITCOIN: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Mastering-Bitcoin-Unlocking-Digital-Cryptocurrencies/dp/1449374042

[NEW] MASTERING BITCOIN, 2nd Edition: https://www.amazon.com/Mastering-Bitcoin-Programming-Open-Blockchain/dp/1491954388

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Music: "Unbounded" by Orfan (https://www.facebook.com/Orfan/)
Outro Graphics: Phneep (http://www.phneep.com/)
Outro Art: Rock Barcellos (http://www.rockincomics.com.br/)
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