So as I posted yesterday I'm now learning about a big lawsuit targeting allies of the Bitcoin Cash community, namely Bitmain Group (CEO Jihan Wu), Bitcoin.com (CEO Roger Ver), Kraken (CEO Jesse Powell) and individual BitcoinABC developers.
According to the linked news release: "the suit alleges that the Defendants collectively engaged in unfair methods of competition, and through a series of deceptive and unfair practices, manipulated the Bitcoin Cash network for their benefit and to the detriment of UnitedCorp and other Bitcoin Cash stakeholders. Their alleged actions resulted in the network losing more than US $4 billion in value as a direct result of the alleged hijacking of the network [...] UnitedCorp alleges that these activities are evidence of not only a violation of the accepted standards and protocols associated with Bitcoin since its inception, but a violation of US antitrust laws..."
Several points... Let's start with a simplification. I think it's highly likely the people behind this suit are Calvin Ayre and Craig Wright, given their stated desires and behavior surrounding the November 2018 hard-fork, and given they did not end up with an unofficial, yet recognized (software) leadership role for the BCH community, which is what they wanted. Apparently there is a video of a Kraken developer alleging secret cooperation between the suit's defendants.
First, even if there was cooperation it's permissible in both the expectations of cryptocurrency communities and weighed against U.S. antitrust law, and I'll explain why. Before doing so, however, I'd suggest if anyone finds disagreement with this view it may also, in the spirit of fairness, be useful to bring a lawsuit against CoinGeek (owner Calvin Ayer) and nChain (chief scientist Craig Wright) for possible similar collusion. I recall reading about resources from nChain and/or Craig Wright possibly setting up miners for CoinGeek Mining with potentially other strategic services which might include advice and/or even finance in an effort to influence the same events named in the UnitedCorp suit. It may likewise be good for these market actors to testify under oath about the extent of any strategic planning or possible collusion.
Part 1 - Cooperative behavior as alleged isn't improper for crytpocurrency communities
Now, let me illustrate why it wouldn't have been improper for any of the aforementioned to have communicated, planned or used strategy surrounding the November 2018 hard-fork. First, as regards cryptocurrency communities, the very act of strategic cooperation is encouraged daily in the form of "pools". These consist of individuals and companies around the world working together, specifically combining collective resources in the form of hash power, to attempt to "win" more blockchain blocks than competitors. The winning of these blocks comes with limited temporary control of some aspects of the network. It is not possible for anyone to have permanent control of the entire network unless they control all software-synced devices connected to the network.
The reason such cooperative activity is not improper is because any individual or entity can join with any other cooperating group! There is no advantage gained by attempting to keep secrets about who may be cooperating with whom, because in the case of some group becoming dominant (winning many blocks) anyone can join that dominant group if there is any public facing pool. More importantly total resources from the point of view of any outside competitor doesn't change, they are only merged, which doesn't lessen the share of blocks still available. Further, even a dominant group can never have total control over all aspects of the network, because several things of varying type make up a complete network, including software and computers and exchanges and other types of business as well as individual users.
Part 2 - Cooperative behavior as alleged doesn't run afoul of U.S. antitrust laws
According to Wikipedia U.S. antitrust law is: law that regulates the conduct and organization of business corporations, generally to promote fair competition for the benefit of consumers.
The key word there is consumers. The reason such laws exist is so consumers are not made to suffer. However, to be a consumer of something there must exist a product. Antitrust laws are meant to, for example, prevent consumers of canned tuna from paying higher prices in the market than they would normally pay if businesses acted as if they were completely cut off from each other. I use this example because this in fact recently happened with tuna in the United States.
Cryptocurrency is different. It's not a product made by businesses to be consumed. Cryptocurrency is the money itself. It's true the cost of the "money" can fluctuate. However, it would not be expected to fluctuate in direct correlation to varying entities working together in the manner indicated by the UnitedCorp suit. This is because the only result of such activities, whether brought about by conspiring or not, is the distribution share of blocks among "nodes" (entities running one version of software or another). However, any proper software will permit economic/transactional activity to continue. Further, the schedule of blocks is not impacted, and it's the schedule of blocks - how often new currency is introduced - that most influences market prices. Other factors influencing price can include speculative perception, such as whether or not a large business, for example Microsoft, makes a notable action with regard to the cryptocurrency; or whether or not entities controlling large amounts of currency on exchanges coordinate buying or selling. These represent the only applicable areas of concern about protection from collusion or useful advantage of secret information. Again, planning simply to attempt to have one group of software participants win a larger share of blocks than others does not generally have any impact on price whatsoever, again, because it doesn't alter the schedule of blocks.
The last point is everything about cryptocurrency is voluntary, including what software anyone desires to run, and whether or not they desire to participate anywhere in the economic system at any time. This means nobody can be forced to do anything, which directly contradicts a key allegation of the lawsuit.
This article is hereby placed into the public domain. Anyone is free to use any part or all of it for any purpose.
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