Bitcoin offers the highest degree of decentralisation and is considered to be free from censorship. However, a developer under the pseudonym 0xb10c discovered evidence of the censorship of sanctioned transactions by a leading mining pool.

In their research, the developer looks at blocks mined by the ViaBTC, Foundry USA, and F2Pool pools. All of them excluded transactions with addresses on the US Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) sanctions list.

As 0xb10c investigated, they discovered that ViaBTC and Foundry USA pools excluded transactions for objective reasons. Moreover, both pools later processed transfers with the same sanctioned addresses.

However, regarding F2Pool, the researcher came to an unambiguous conclusion about the presence of a filtering mechanism. Particularly surprising to them was the fact that the pool most loyal to US oversight bodies was one registered in Asia, not the US. On an annualised basis, F2Pool accounts for 13.7% of the total Bitcoin mined.

It's worth explaining here that miners tend to unite because, when efforts are consolidated, the profitability for each participant increases. Therefore, most independent miners prefer to cooperate by forming pools. However, in the case of such enabled filtering, the miners simply skip the transaction, without even being aware of the filters and irrespective of the degree of remuneration.

This explains the wave of discontent from the community, which has criticised the management of F2Pool.

Any manifestations of censorship are, first of all, a blow to the ideology of Bitcoin, which was created for freedom from the dictates of individual institutions of power.

F2Pool co-founder Chun Wang responded to the investigation and wave of outrage by posting the following tweet, which he swiftly deleted:

"Why do you feel surprised when I refuse to confirm transactions for those criminals, dictators and terrorists? I have every right not to confirm any transactions from Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping, don't I?"

This only poured fuel on the fire. Amid widespread criticism, he backtracked, penning a new tweet about temporarily shutting down the filtering. That post was also deleted.

Users decided to remind Wang of the basic principles of BTC that make the coin so unique and sought after:

• The issuance is limited to 21 million coins, and the asset must not depreciate due to inflation.
• There should be no censorship. No one should interfere with the confirmation or execution of transactions.
• The code is open-source.
• There should be no restrictions on network usage.
• There should be no authorisations or requirements to share personal data.
• All coins are interchangeable and equal.
• Transactions are irreversible once they have been recorded in the ledger.

StormGain Analytical Group 
(platform for trading, exchanging and storing cryptocurrency)

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