One of the primary sub-debates occurring in the Great Bitcoin Scaling Debate is the role of “governance” in a cryptocurrency. Recently this one flared up again, with Adam Back, CEO of Blockstream, declaring:
@iang_fc @el33th4xor @drwasho governance is anathema to Bitcoin as digital gold, you dont govern gold atoms, neither bitcoin.
— Adam Back (@adam3us) March 30, 2017
What Back says here isn’t exactly novel: many Bitcoin advocates would agree, and the comparison to gold is a common one. In fact, that has always been one of the main selling points of Bitcoin and cryptocurrency in general: like gold, it isn’t controlled by any entity or person. For average, libertarian-leaning Bitcoin fans, this is music to their anti-government years.
