Why BIP-110 failed? And where could Big Bitcoin lead us?

Is it because miners didn’t support the softfork?
Or is it because only 20% of nodes ran the software supporting BIP-110?

I fear that even if we had 80% of nodes supporting BIP-110, miners could still easily ignore the proposed change. I just don’t see a reason why they would do otherwise. (I might be wrong…please help me see why miners would react differently if there was much higher node support).

On this point, I found Ryan Grote’s perspective valuable:

So yeah, bitcoiners did not have skin in the game to defend the system. Running a home node seems to be like changing your Facebook profile picture that you support the war. Cool. But are you willing to invest your money in hash-rate to actually enter the fight? If you just stay at home with your new Facebook profile picture.. the mining army could simply ignore you. And they did exactly did.

Now the scary question is: what comes next if Big Bitcoin, the Saylor-led “Bitcoin Security Consortsium” and the centralized mining pools have captures Bitcoin. How could that evolve?

Saylor has already shared he things Satoshi’s 1M coins should be frozen. I am sure his consortsium buddies will support this effort in their effect to make BTC resistent to AI. I am not sure how the freezing of the coins would technically work, but imagine they do that in 2031. BAM! You have the first precedent of censored bitcoins on a mass scale. Once you have done this, you can also do it for “Russian” coins, “North Korean” coins, etc. AML is now the norm on Bitcoin

Then, we have our “friend” Peter Todd who has been proposing printing of new bitcoin (tail emission) thus increasing the 21M supply cap. I am sure our beloved “Bitcoin Security Consortsium” will sooner or later embrace his idea. Miners would love it even more as it brings them more revenues. It is 2040 and they do a hard fork with all of the hash rate supports the new +21M coins. Meanwhile the Shitcoin Magazine propaganda machine and its correspondent army of “influencers” will educate us all why this is a great idea..so we most bitcoiners again go with the flow...cuz why not. By 2040 a bitcoin will be already $2M. We all made it, right?

I don’t know why you are in bitcoin, but I ain’t here for the $2M price point. Sure, that is cool, but that is not the point of bitcoin. And I ask myself: would Bitcoin with a growing amount of censored coins and a supply cap increased beyond 21M still be Bitcoin? Or would it be something else?

In light of these thoughts, Matthew Krater’s recent post might not look that crazy:

If Bitcoin is captured by Big Bitcoin, centralised miners, and corporations, it is only a matter of time (years or decades) before they drive the protocol to stalling, destruction, or just another stupid wall street asset in the portfolio of the financial industrial complex.

And so to me Matthew’s argument goes in the direction of:

• Why don’t we keep building on the BIP-110 chain

• Yes, this will be a minority chain, it will likely NOT surpass BigBitcoin’s market cap today.

• But when BigBitcoin eventually drives their chain off the cliff, our chain will shine.

In a free market, the best money wins. And over time BIP-110 could prove to be the best money. The problem I see is that even if the BIP-110 has the best monetary characteristics, its price and market cap may very well wane before BigBitcoin’s failure.

So what do we do? How do we combat Big Bitcoin and the attempts to destroy Bitcoin? I don’t know, but I am curious to hear your thoughts.