Dikaios1517 on Nostr: Well, there's always incentive to vote yourself free money. Problem is that you can't ...

Well, there's always incentive to vote yourself free money. Problem is that you can't get everyone else to also go along with you.

Say you propose a change to the code that gives every node 1 Bitcoin, irrespective of whether they mine. Well, you as a node runner might be incentivized to run that new code, but that doesn't matter much if you're the only one running it. You still need to 1. Make everyone else who runs a node is aware of it, and 2. Convince them that it is in their best interest to also run it.

Might think that's easy, right? Won't all those node runners also want to receive a free Bitcoin without doing any work? Sure, they likely would, if they don't know any better. However, there's plenty of node runners who are fully aware of what would happen if they did so, because even though they would have a free "Bitcoin," it wouldn't really be Bitcoin anymore. It undermines the whole reason why Bitcoin is valuable in the first place. They also know that it would just create a fork that people would sell, expecting that it will lose value over time.

Even those who like the idea will want to put their own spin on it. Some will wonder why stop at 1 Bitcoin per node and will want to receive 2 or 3 instead. Others will rightly note that it's too easy to spin up a bunch of nodes and get more Bitcoin for free, and they will want to limit it to one node per person by requiring KYC to ensure no one can get more than 1 free Bitcoin. Others will be adamantly against KYC, and they will want to regulate who gets the free Bitcoin by some other means that better preserves privacy, like requiring a certain amount of proof of work that can be done by an average PC's CPU, but which would be prohibitive to spin up a lot of them. Someone else will note that if each node is getting a full Bitcoin, it will be more than worth the money to buy as many PCs as you can, each able to generate the required proof of work for the free Bitcoin, so they will suggest limiting it to 1 Bitcoin per node and per IP address... So on and so forth, with each camp gaining supporters and eventually getting fed up with one another and spinning up their own idea that has a small minority support.

Meanwhile, the actual Bitcoin keeps chugging along. Tick tock, next block.

It's exceptionally difficult to get people to agree on anything that is a change to the way Bitcoin works. Even in the least controversial of circumstances, there are competing ideas about how to do things. As such, making no change at all always has the advantage over any proposed change. It is the default position of what will occur if not everyone agrees about exactly what the change should be, including every minute detail about how it will work.