Have you heard of the Overton Window ? It's a concept every Bitcoiner should familiarize themselves with. You see, Bitcoin is not just a cryptography system. It's not even merely an economic system... It's a sociological/economic system .

What do I mean by that? Why is that important? And what's it got to do with Overton? In the grand scheme of things, you could say that even fiat money is sociological in the sense that its value is based on its own network effect; in other words, its based on the fact that many people use it. Bitcoin is the same way -- it's only as accepted as people agree. But unlike fiat money (which is fairly static in its functionality), Bitcoin has many properties that could be changed. There's transaction formats, block sizes, op codes, addresses, and a lot more.

Humans and Their Choices

Bitcoin is ultimately a permissionless system. Coders can write any code they want. Miners can run any code they want. Users can use or invest in any chain they want.

But the choices are up to human beings. And human beings make their decisions based on the information and opinions they have, which is often acquired from trusted sources (other humans). Unless you're reviewing the code line by line and testing it yourself on a testnet, you're at least relying a little bit on others for information about protocol changes. So therefore, because we rely on others for information and opinions,the information and messages and opinions that are spread through the internet are very important. Some have called this "proof of Social Media" (poSM) in contrast to proof of work.

Lamenting the existence of poSM and wishing everyone would "just follow the longest chain" is wishing the world were different than it is. poSM is real and it affects us. Some are upset by this fact and have said that if this is true, then Bitcoin is broken. No, Bitcoin is not broken. It is simply a sociological/economic system.

The Overton Window

From Wikipedia: "The Overton window is an approach to identifying which ideas define the domain of acceptability within a democracy's possible governmental policies. Proponents of policies outside the window seek to convince or persuade the public in order to move and/or expand the window. Proponents of current policies, or similar ones, within the window seek to convince people that policies outside it should be deemed unacceptable ."

The Overton window doesn't just apply to governmental policies; it applies to Bitcoin protocol development too. The great scaling debate in BTC from 2013-2017 is a perfect example. At one time it was unthinkable that we wouldn't allow the blocks to get bigger. Slowly, over time, the idea moved from unthinkable to merely "radical", to acceptable, and then become popular enough that the idea was policy. And so it is today in BTC.

Moving the Overton Window