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Comment by jstx1 | Hacker News Reader

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jstx1·

You don't get to make a forced change to Bitcoin's code unilaterally, the rest of the network has to accept the change.

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Uncle Sam: “Accept this change”

Node: “No”

Sam: *ICBM rolls out*

(I’m not saying they would, I’m saying they could).

> (I’m not saying they would, I’m saying they could).

I'm not a lawyer, but I'm skeptical that a judge's ruling could force Congress or the President to deploy intercontinental ballistic missiles. I don't think that's ever happened, and (as you say) this won't be the time it does.

It’s a deliberately extreme example to show that one can force changes to anything if you have a big enough stick.

I mean, Uncle Sam isn’t an actual person either.

There isn't a single node to point to, it's a globally distributed network.

And?

So you think they'll send ballistic missiles throughout the whole world? Including China, Russia, UK, Germany, France? All of whom have nukes? Good luck with that.

I very explicitly didn’t say they would. I’m saying they could, and implicitly that if America was so inclined it can menace basically anyone and any nation just by pointing at their massive collection of pointy things that hurt.

"Where's the giant Mansley?"

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=42W9ZCn-M1g

Yeah, US should actually start engaging in state sponsored terrorism and engage in piracy to make money, it'd be even more profitable than giving a total scammer 50B$ by deploying ICBMs all over the world.

Hopefully the next step is that those coins were in another nation with their own ICBM stockpile so that we can end the whole humanity experiment once and for all.

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