Bitcoin Zero
The aim of this repository is to collabarate on bringing about the end of proof of work style crypto currencies such as Bitcoin and perhaps crypto currencies in general.
Why
The biggest issue with proof of work (and soon proof of space) crypto currencies is the huge environmental impact they have both on power consumption to mine coins and on resource consumption to build miners. We are in the midst of a climate emergency and cannot afford to run a system which consumes ~.5% of the world's energy, when much more efficient alternatives exist.
A wider issue with crypto currencies is that they, for all intents and purposes, act like a Ponzi scheme; the "investment" from newer investors is used to pay out the profits of the early adoptors. This is not a sustainable model and will result in an eventual collapse. When this happens, a lot of people are going to wind up having lost their life savings simply by making an "investment". From a social perspective, this is awful, but even from a pragmatic perspective the exposure that the international banking system may have to bitcoin if it continues to grow at the rate it is doing could be sufficient to trigger a new financial crisis when it all comes crashing down.
How
Bitcoin is fairly well entrenched and will be difficult to shift without a significant movement; the main purpose of this repository is to collabarate on campaigning to raise awareness of the issue (too many outside tech do not know how bitcoin functions and why it needs to be stopped) and to build up a political movement with the capability of taking action against crypto currencies.
The easiest way to kill Bitcoin and other proof of work coins is to cut them off from the global banking network. Without the ability to sell coins for real currencies, they will rapidly devalue and miners will be forced to cease operation for economic reasons alone.
Other options with push the price down will have an impact - the lower the value of a Bitcoin, the less energy will be expended on mining reducing the ecological impact, so every little helps, and any option can be persued in the short term to minimise the damage until a full ban is achieved.
There are four main strands of attack:
1. Technical
This is the hardest strand and least likely to bear fruit in the near future. It would include doing cryptographic research into the protocols which make up proof of work coins, looking for vulnerabilities which can be exploited, and publishing them to undermine confidence in the systems.
We do not advocate mounting technical attacks on the network: Many of them would be illegal and many would require a lot of computational power which would add to instead of help with the problem.
2. Political
This should form the main focus of our campaigning: In the early stages it will mainly consist of recruiting allies in political posistions, especially green politicians and environmental campaigners. We will also work on producing some information for people who wish to contact their representitives to raise the issue with them. Producing easy to understand explainers of the main issues with proof of work crypto currencies which can be turned into template letters and translated into other languages is the best way for you to contribute right now
3. Legal
The legal area is probably not one which we will be able to engage in easily. However, if anyone has the expertise to devise legal strategies which might be adopted, this could produce a helpful fallback position should the political strand not bear fruit. We'd be looking for legal cases through judicial review to try to force regulators to take a tougher stand on Bitcoin exchanges. I have no idea if this is realistic or not.
4. Community
The final strand of attack is an interesting one: The idea is to form a critical mass of people to both force political action and to create a significant threat of impending action. Bitcoin derives its $50,000 price tag solely from the assumption that it will be possible to sell it for $60,000 next month. If a significant enough threat of action shakes the confidence in the currency, that assumption disappears and this will send the price plummeting. This, in and of itself, might be enough to finish Bitcoin, the worst offender, and should deal signficiant damage to other coins.
Maintainers
If this project grows to the size I'm hoping it will, I will be seeking additional maintainers, especially those who speak other languages. Initially I will be restricting these positions to people I've met in person or have specfically invited to the project, but I'll be looking for ways to open this up in the future.
Policies
If you want to improve upon any of the content in this repository open a PR; other contributors can then provide feedback on your proposals and we can form a consensus on new wording and additions. Until there are a few regular contributors able to review and feedback on proposals, I will be committing directly to main for speed purposes in estabilishing the base from which we can work; this doesn't mean this work isn't up for review: If you want to suggest changes, open a PR to discuss. Once a few regular contributors have established themselves and we have the basics of the content established, I will move to using the PR process as well. To stress: this is only about improving my speed while I'm the main/only contributor and is not intended to prevent discussion on items
Please open separate PRs per item so they can be discussed and merged separately.