Hello everyone,
About a week ago I wrote a post about how a spot Bitcoin ETF can affect the price and in it I mentioned the things that can affect the price for the better.
This time I want to turn the attention to the other side - the bad side.
Before I begin, it is important for me to point out that this is pure speculation and this is just my opinion. Let's maintain a civilized discourse even if there is no agreement between us.
To understand why Bitcoin Spot ETF can negatively affect the price of Bitcoin and even the entire crypto market, it is necessary to go back a few years, 2015 to be precise.
Block size war The story of the Bitcoin block size war is a well-known story and you can find a lot of information about it online. Here is the summary.
In 2010, the creator of Bitcoin - Satoshi Nakamoto - introduced the block size limit in Bitcoin which was 1MB (until then, there was no limit at all).
About a month later, concerns were raised about the change and the main thing was the need to cancel the limit if Bitcoin wants to become a payment system in the future and fight companies like PayPal, Visa and others.
Despite the concerns and criticism, Satoshi did not change the block limit and it remained in place.
In 2015 the block limit again hit the headlines when Gavin Andreessen (along with Mike Hearn) proposed BIP 101 in which he proposed to hard fork Bitcoin, which would create Bitcoin XT.
The proposal included increasing the block limit in Bitcoin to 8MB and doubling it every year until 2036 - at which time the block size will reach 8GB per block.
Many supported Gavin's idea and among them you can find Circle (the company behind the issuance of USDC), Bitpay, Bitgo and a significant number of miners.
On the other hand, among those who opposed the idea, you can find Adam Beck and Summon Mow.
In the same year Segregated Witness (SegWit) was introduced during the "block war".
Its main goal was to pave the way for Layer 2 on the Bitcoin network, which would help increase the speed of transactions without performing a hard fork, Something that happened with the introduction of the Lightning network.
But the institutional side was not satisfied with SegWit and in 2017 huge companies such as Circle, Bitmain and Ledger led by DCG which represented 80% of Bitcoin's hash rate met in what is known as the "New York Agreement".
In the agreement, the companies agreed to accept SegWit, but in return wanted to create a hard fork with increasing block size.
The move failed because shortly before a clean fork (copy paste) was created for Bitcoin in what is now known as Bitcoin Cash.
The institutional side that realized that creating another hard fork would not yield results decided to give up and the move was recognized as a failure by them.
Present Day Bitcoin may have survived the last attack by the institutions, but it seems that a new attack is about to arrive.
Blackrock's stock certificate, the entry of the giant bank GP Morgan into the field of DeFi and the interest of the regulators is perhaps a new attack to take over, and this time not only on Bitcoin, but on the entire crypto market.
Price control will eliminate the need to control the miners, nodes and developers.
In the case of projects with a proof-of-stake consensus mechanism it will even be easier.
The asset managers have trillions under their belt, they need to allocate a very small percentage to own more than 51% of the coins in all the major projects, which would make them the biggest voting power holders.
After realizing that with Bitcoin it would be more difficult, the institutions decided to choose Ethereum as the future of the payment system, and the transition from proof of work to proof of possession made their takeover move even easier.
It is clear that after they approve the ETF on Bitcoin, Ethereum is next in line.
