Who Really Controls Bitcoin Core? The 5 Maintainers Behind the Code

Описание: Bitcoin says you don't have to trust anyone. But in practice, most users still trust a tiny handful of maintainers to decide what enters the reference client.

This episode breaks down what Bitcoin Core maintainers actually control, how they get that power, and what happens if that trust ever breaks.

*What Maintainers Can and Cannot Do*
They cannot touch your wallet. What they hold is merge access to the Bitcoin Core repository, the key that decides what lands in the software most users install.

*Why the Real Bottleneck Is Code Review*
Bitcoin's process is open in theory, but almost nobody can review hundreds of thousands of lines of C++ at expert level. That creates a very real concentration of trust.

*The 2010 Bug That Nearly Broke Bitcoin*
A vulnerability once allowed 184 billion BTC to be created in a single transaction. It was fixed fast, but it proved that code mistakes at this layer are existential.

*Bitcoin's Plan B*
If maintainers ever fail, the ultimate fallback is a fork. But the cost is chaos, community fracture, and a fight over which chain is the real Bitcoin.

📌 This is episode #5 of the Bitcoin Fundamentals series
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📌 Previous episode: Episode #4 - Could Quantum Computers Crack Bitcoin in Minutes?

Music: Investigations by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com), Licensed under CC BY 3.0