You have to trust the cryptographic rules. You can't trivially count the coins.

You are right though, it's sloppy to say "cannot audit", but it points towards a significant tradeoff that Monero accepts.

I feel that.

Personally, I can't get behind Monero as a Bitcoin replacement.

The primary kill shot in my mind is that you cannot audit the supply of Monero, so you can never prove that there's no inflation.

Default settings are powerful, no doubt.

But we have the option to fork at the social level and the protocol level, and the network is wrestling with that right now.

In my view, this is why we need to fracture a bit. Too much concentrated decision making on a small group of "core" developers. Power accrued to them in an unhealthy way.

I’m sure Australia only bans it so the local gambling monopoly can control the entire market.

Gambling is huge in Australia!

> “Social consensus” is basically you saying that code decisions should be made based on the number of people on subreddits you can get agreeing with you. This is not how sane development processes work.

I'm not advocating this. Yes, that is absurd.

People have their entire life savings in this tech. Core acts with callous indifference, and outright mockery. That is a problem for a cornerstone project.

They do indeed owe it to the Bitcoin community to thoroughly, and repeated explain themselves. Who do they work for? What's the point of being a Core dev if you don't give a fuck about the community, education and consensus.

The larger Bitcoin gets, the more people depend on it, the slower development must become - and the amount of time spent on education must rise to match the audience. You no longer just move fast and add features or change things without thoroughly explaining yourself.

> They relentlessly said this shit for years to demand Core people implement suicidal policies that would have destroyed the decentralized nature of #Bitcoin

I'm sure they were asking for features instead of ossification. Not comparable, as now it is Core *pushing* changes.

Not only changing the data carrier limit, also changing what it means and ALSO deprecating the option to remove the choice from the node runner.

Completely violating the spirit of Bitcoin: individual sovereignty.

> Eventually they tired of it and adopted the current and correct attitude towards people who think they know better.

"lalala, I'm running v30, haha, fuck you peasant!"

Is not the correct attitude. It never will be. If you take that attitude it shows you cannot even empathize with the very community you signed up to serve.

Nothing. Stops. Train.