A friend asked me about the interview I did a couple days ago where I mentioned Roger Ver’s influence as an instance of how Bitcoin is not an example of a DAO.  My usage was not meant to disparage him — in fact, his sobering backstory helps explain his intense passion today.

I have a longer explanation regarding DAOs that will be published in a couple weeks.  In the meantime however, regarding changes to Bitcoin itself, I do think a fork of some kind is possible (not that it will happen) largely due to two different groups that would like to take the protocol different directions.  For example, in the face of the new CoinValidation route that the Foundation began promoting last fall, Roger Ver’s Blockchain.info promoted Shared Coin as a way to work around potential white/black listing.

While it is unclear what direction the Foundation (and hence the protocol as most devs work through them) will ultimately take, the overall tone of regulators at the New York Department of Financial Services hearing this past week was not conducive to individual privacy.  In fact, Benjamin Lawsky, the Superintendent of the Financial Services department stated that, “It’s not worth it to society to allow money laundering and all of the things it facilitates to persist in order to permit 1,000 flowers to bloom on the innovation side.”

I am not sure if Lawsky realizes that Mao originally came up with that phrase or why (to “lure out the snakes from the cave”).  Perhaps projects like Dark Wallet and ZeroCoin will change that equilibrium.