Vitalik Buterin: I totally agree to delist BSV

This article comes from Mars Finance (ID: hxcj24h) , author Du Huitang, Chu Xingjuan, Liang Yushan; the original article comes from vitalik , author Vitalik Buterin (V God);

“Totally agree and support the delisting of BSV.”

On April 15, Binance announced the delisting of BSV, which caused heated discussions in the industry. While many exchanges and industry celebrities expressed their views, Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin also made his point clear.

In addition, Vitalik also responded to the criticism of Binance for delisting BSV. He pointed out that freedom of speech is a topic that bothers many people, and he is considering writing an article to talk about his views on this topic.

On the same day, Vitalik Buterin published a 10,000-word article titled "On Freedom of Speech" on his personal blog, which comprehensively presented his views on the speech of the crypto community, the direct conflict with Craig Wright, and the pros and cons of Binance delisting BSV. The full article contains 4 main points:

• Vitalik pointed out that public speeches must follow the rules of public spaces, and those who violate the rules must bear corresponding penalties. Craig Wright needs to accept the punishment, so he fully agrees to delist BSV;

• Vitalik Buterin responded to his direct conflict with Craig Wright at the Deconomy Summit last year, saying that industry summits and Internet forums belong to two different public contexts, and he did not ask Craig Wright to "shut up", and his doubts about him remain;

• Vitalik Buterin said that the delisting of BSV was not to prevent investors from trading BSV, and he also opposed exchanges "randomly" delisting tokens. However, the delisting did trigger strong condemnation of BSV in society, which was useful and necessary;

• V God believes that opposing centralization only makes people realize that centralization is harmful and abused, not that people should oppose everything centralization does.

The following is the full text of Vitalik Buterin’s blog, exclusively translated by Mars Finance (ID: hxcj24h):

“A statement can be both true and dangerous. The preceding statement is one of those.” —David Friedman

Freedom of speech is an issue that many Internet communities have been working hard to defend over the past 20 years. The cryptocurrency and blockchain communities, which are primarily concerned with resisting censorship resistance, place particular emphasis on freedom of speech. Over the past few years, the crypto community has grown at an extremely high speed, and the extremely high financial and social risks have repeatedly verified the application and limitations of this concept. In this article, I hope to unravel some of the contradictions and give an example of what the true standard of "freedom of speech" is.

“Free Speech Law” vs. “Free Speech”

A common, but in my opinion frustrating, argument is that “free speech law” refers exclusively to legal limits on what the government can do to private entities, without any explanation. Private entities covered include companies, private platforms, internet forums, and industry conferences. In the crypto community, the classic example of “private censorship” is the “Theymos” decision—the moderator of the Reddit community /r/bitcoin subreddit, Theymos, decided to strictly censor the subreddit and prohibit members from discussing Bitcoin’s hard fork to increase transaction capacity.

△ Translation: You can promote BIP 101 as an idea, but you can't promote it in actual use (in the Bitcoin forum of /r/bitcoin). Bitcoin is not a democracy, nor does it belong to miners or nodes. Switching to XT is not a vote for BIP 101. It became a separate network/currency after abandoning Bitcoin. It's good that you have the freedom to do it. One of the particularly beautiful qualities of Bitcoin is its lack of democracy. Even if 99% of people use Bitcoin, you still have the freedom to implement BIP 101 on a separate currency without being coerced by other Bitcoin users to use democracy to force you to use the real Bitcoin network/currency. But I have no obligation to open another Bitcoin forum branch on the Bitcoin forum on reddit, and I don't plan to do so.

John Blocke compiled a timeline of censorship in the /r/bitcoin subreddit.

(https://medium.com/@johnblocke/a-brief-and-incomplete-history-of-censorship-in-r-bitcoin-c85a290fe43)

Below is a post from Reddit moderator Theymos defending his decision to regulate.

The post contained the infamous resolution: “If 90% of the users in the /r/bitcoin subreddit find this deal unacceptable, then I will kick 90% of the users out.”

Those who support Theymos’s censorship decision often use the argument that strict management is fine because the /r/bitcoin subreddit is Theymos’s “private forum” and he has the right to do whatever he wants there, and those who don’t like it can go to other forums.

△ Translation: Party: I hope the Bitcoin core team can recover the losses caused by Theymos, and Bitcoin can rely on decentralization. What can the community rely on?

Neo: Theymos created a private forum that has nothing to do with the Bitcoin Core developer team. The community depends on Bitcoin, so let's keep it decentralized.

△ Translation: BCH is not censored, it has its own Reddit sub-forum (and network) where people can discuss. Equating censorship of the Bitcoin Reddit forum with censorship mechanisms in the usual sense seems to prove that most of the content on it is political. People are not censored in specific private communities. If BCH relies on itself, (and we hope so), then we don't need censorship. Those who think it is needed are not making BCH successful, they want to control Bitcoin. So it makes sense to ban people with such motivations.

Layer 2 is the solution for scalability. I wonder, won’t this be the future?

Well, Theymos is not breaking any laws by managing his forum in this way. But to most people, this management method still seems to violate some kind of free speech behavior. What does this mean? First, it is important to realize that free speech is not just a law of a country, but a social principle. The fundamental goal of a social principle is the same as the fundamental goal of the law, which is to create an environment for discussion. In this discussion environment, good ideas can win the favor of the public ideas rather than the ideas promoted by the powerful. Government power is not the only power that people want to protect. There is also the right of a company to fire an employee, the right of an Internet forum moderator to delete a post, and various other forms of soft and hard power.

What, then, are the fundamental social principles? To quote Eliezer Yudkowsky:

"There are very few prohibitions in the human art of reason, no ifs, ands, buts, or escape clauses. This is one of them. Bad ideas will be refuted, but they will not be shot. Never, never, never."

According to the Slatestarcodex website:

"What exactly does the "bullet" mentioned in the previous quote refer to? Does it include other projectiles? Arrows, boulders from slings, melee weapons like swords or maces? Where should we draw the line when it comes to "inappropriate responses to arguments"? When an argument occurs, a good response is to clarify a point about the idea; a bad response is to silence it. If you are trying to clarify an idea, your success depends on how good the idea is; conversely, if you are trying to silence someone, your success depends on your strength. "Shooting" can indeed silence a person without resolving an argument. Similarly, throwing boulders from slings, killing someone with swords, and calling in a mob wielding pitchforks can effectively extinguish an idea. Trying to fire someone for holding a different idea is actually one way to extinguish an idea without resolving the issue."

This means that in some cases, the basic premise of "safe spaces" is that people who don't want to face certain views for whatever reason can come together. The most harmless example is perhaps a community like ethresear.ch, where posts are only deleted if they "go off topic" to ensure that the discussion does not go off topic. However, "safe spaces" also have their dark side, as Ken White writes:

“It may surprise you that I am a supporter of safe spaces. I support safe spaces because I believe in the idea of ​​free association. If designed in a certain way, safe spaces may just be an application of the idea of ​​free association… But not everyone thinks that safe spaces should look like this. Some people imagine it as a sword, and believe that if used properly, safe spaces can be an effective supplement to public spaces, requiring people in the space to abide by their private norms. (To be clear) This is not freedom of association.”

So it’s fine to create your own “safe space” in a small corner, but you also need to consider the “public space.” Any attempt to turn the “public space” into a “safe space” that serves special interests is a mistake.

So, what is "public space"? Obviously, public space is not just space "owned or operated by the government", it also includes private public space. Private public space is also a complete public space. Because of its informality, some words and deeds can be treated relatively tolerantly.

This phenomenon is also consistent with common moral intuition. For example, if someone makes some racial or sexist remarks in private, the impact is not as bad as it is in public. In the case of the Reddit community /r/bitcoin sub-forum, no matter who is the moderator in the program, one fact cannot be denied - this sub-forum is a public space. The following evidence can prove this:

• It occupies “prime real estate”, especially the topic of “Bitcoin”. This makes people think that this is the default place to discuss Bitcoin;

• The value of this subreddit is not only created by Theymos, the moderator, but also by the thousands of users who come here to discuss Bitcoin. This shows that, now and in the future, this has become a public space for discussing Bitcoin;

• For many, the change in the Theymos moderators' management agreement came as a surprise, and it was obviously impossible to foresee in advance.

If, on the contrary, they had created a subreddit called /r/bitcoinsmallblockers and made it clear that it was an exclusive space for a small number of node supporters and that discussions on hard fork disputes were not welcome, few people would have felt uncomfortable now. It’s just that no one pointed out that even people with opposite ideologies should have space for internal discussions. However, in reality, they tried to "take the public space for themselves and require others in the space to abide by their private norms." It is for these reasons that we saw the Bitcoin community split due to disagreements over block size, a violent technical fork, and ultimately a cold peace between BTC and BCH.

De-platforming

About a year ago, at the Deconomy Summit, I publicly called out Satoshi Wright, the scammer who claims to be Satoshi Nakamoto, and questioned why the organizers "allowed this scammer to speak at the summit" and explained "why I thought Satoshi Wright's speech was meaningless."

Of course, Craig Wright’s supporters responded to me with an article titled “Accusations of Censorship”:

△ Translation: Why is Craig Wright allowed to speak at such a conference? Vitalik Buterin hints that Dr. Wright's university degree is not real.

The question itself is shocking enough, but what is even more shocking is that Timothy Mow publicly agreed to the censorship initiative. Censoring the opinions of others is exactly what Blockstream and the Bitcoin Core development team have been accused of by many, including directly in a debate with Bitcoin Jesus Roger Ver. Now it is Timothy’s turn to advocate for silencing others’ opinions in public.

Did I try to shut up Craig Wright? Of course not. Someone might argue, “Oh, the Deconomy Summit is not a public space.” But what I’m saying is that industry summits are completely different from Internet forums. Internet forums can be a completely neutral medium, no matter what happens.

But a summit is essentially a curated list of talks, with limited time carefully allocated, and those speakers who are lucky enough to speak receive a lot of attention. A summit is an event that is "edited" by the organizers to convey the organizers' intention - "Here are the views and ideas we think are worth knowing and listening to." Every summit "censors" all the speakers' ideas because there are not enough opportunities for everyone to speak. This is a fixed pattern of summits. Therefore, it is absolutely legal for me to object to the selection of the conference (at the Deconomy Summit).

This extends to other types of selective platforms. Platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube have implemented autonomous selection with recommendation algorithms, which determine which content is more likely to be recommended to users. These platforms usually do this for their own benefit, with the goal of maximizing user participation. In general, these practices will bring some unexpected negative effects, such as promoting conspiracy theories such as "the earth is flat."

Therefore, given that these platforms have already started (automatically) personalized recommendations, pointing the recommended content to more pro-social goals that the government approves of, it is understandable that they are criticized by the outside world. Of course, "censorship" has not seriously hindered people from understanding the story of Craig Wright, and you can still visit their website (https://coingeek.com/). In short, if someone already operates the platform and outputs content that has been screened by editors, it seems reasonable to let them output more pro-social standards to the same extent.

The latest example of this principle is Twitter's "delisting BSV" campaign. Some cryptocurrency exchanges announced the delisting of BSV trading pairs (the Bitcoin fork led by Craig Wright), the most famous of which is Binance. Many people (including some rational people) condemned the delisting of BSV as a form of censorship, and even compared it to credit card companies blocking WikiLeaks:

△ Translation: This phenomenon shows that the cryptocurrency community is committed to fighting censorship, getting rid of proxy power and discrimination, and perhaps deciding to have the power to make rules to censor.

Power transfer, not decentralization.

I have always been a critic of the hegemony of centralized exchanges. Will I oppose the "delist BSV" campaign based on the principle of free speech this time? No, I support it.

Many of the participants in the "delisting BSV" campaign, such as Kraken, are not the "do-everything" platforms. They make a lot of decisions about which tokens to accept and which to reject. Kraken only accepts a few tokens, and they passively "censor" almost all projects. Shapeshift supports more currencies, but it does not support SPANK or even KNC.

So in the cases of Kraken and Shapeshift, delisting BSV is more like reallocating scarce resources (attention/legitimacy) than censoring the project. Binance is a little different, following the philosophy of "everything is free", and does accept a larger number of cryptocurrencies. It also has a unique position as a market leader with a lot of liquidity.

Therefore, some people questioned Binance on two points.

First, censorship is retaliating against genuine malicious censorship by core members of the BSV community when they threaten critics like Peter McCormack with legal letters. In an “anarchist” environment where people’s perception of norms is highly divided, “tit-for-tat” physical retaliation is a better social norm because it ensures that people only face punishments that prove that what they believe is legitimate.

Furthermore, delisting will not make it harder for people to trade BSV, as crypto exchange Coinex has said it will not delist BSV (in fact, I am also against exchanges “randomly” delisting tokens). But the delisting did trigger a strong condemnation of BSV in society, which is useful and necessary. So for now, there is a case to support all exchanges delisting BSV. Although after some thought, (I find opponents) advocating that Binance give up delisting BSV for the sake of “freedom of speech” does have some truth.

in conclusion

In summary, it is often reasonable to oppose centralized power. But centralized power always exists, so use it for what you believe to be prosocial purposes (see Brian Kaplan's discussion of coordinating support for open borders with support for anti-Ebola restrictions). Opposing centralized power is about convincing people that it is harmful and abused, not about opposing everything it does.

If someone manages to build a permissionless, cross-chain decentralized exchange that facilitates trading between all assets, then the exchange won’t need to use social networks to promote the listing of coins, because anyone can list coins. I support such an exchange, even if it allows users to trade BSV. What I support is that BSV has been removed from a position of exclusivity, a position that has been given a higher legitimacy than simply existing.

So, the conclusion is: censoring even unofficial public spaces is not a good thing; censoring is OK in truly private spaces (especially non-“default” spaces of the wider community); excluding a project by denying access is not a good thing; excluding a project because it lacks legitimacy is OK.