> On Jun 30, 2021, at 05:45, Zac Greenwood <zach...@gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> 
> Eric,
> 
> > A million nodes saying a transaction is invalid does nothing to enforce 
> > that knowledge
> 
> It does. Nodes disregard invalid transactions and invalid blocks as if they 
> never existed. It is not possible for any party to transact bitcoin in a way 
> that violates the set of rules enforced by the network of 
> consensus-compatible nodes that we call Bitcoin.

When Fincen walks into Coinbase and every other exchange (and white market 
business in the country), and tells them to change a rule or they are taking 
the CEO out in hancuffs for money laundering, I’m pretty sure that their node 
with not be able to prevent it.

Enforcement is always people. We use the term node as a metaphorical term for 
people who use the node to avoid taking bad money. Like those machines that 
test paper money, they offer no resistance themselves.

A node in a closet checking transactions, unconnected to any human actually 
rejecting the money in trade, offers no resistance to anything. It can be 
forked off without any consequence whatsoever. 

This subject was discussed here during the BCH split. People were setting up 
nodes on cloud services, to boost numbers. These non-economic nodes were of 
course of no consequence, which was not a matter of debate. I’m explaining to 
you why that is.

The network ignores non-economic nodes as if they never existed.

> Zac
> 
> 
>> On Wed, Jun 30, 2021 at 2:03 PM Eric Voskuil <e...@voskuil.org> wrote:
>> A million nodes saying a transaction is invalid does nothing to enforce that 
>> knowledge.
>> 
>> An economic node is a person who refuses to accept invalid money. A node 
>> only informs this decision, it cannot enforce it. That’s up to people.
>> 
>> And clearly if one is not actually accepting bitcoin for anything at the 
>> time, he is not enforcing anything.
>> 
>> The idea of a non-economic node is well established, nothing new here.
>> 
>> e
>> 
>>>> On Jun 30, 2021, at 04:33, Zac Greenwood <zach...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>> 
>>> 
>>> Hi Eric,
>>> 
>>> > A node (software) doesn’t enforce anything. Merchants enforce consensus 
>>> > rules
>>> 
>>> … by running a node which they believe to enforce the rules of Bitcoin.
>>> 
>>> A node definitely enforces consensus rules and defines what is Bitcoin. I 
>>> am quite disturbed that this is even being debated here.
>>> 
>>> Zac
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