Marathon mined its first “clean” block five days after the company began directing 100% of its 10.37 exa hash per second hash rate to the “compliant” mining pool.
The company’s ability to select which transactions it includes in a block seems contrarian to Bitcoin’s philosophy for many in the space.
If some coins get treated differently than others based on government regulations, and that could pose a challenge to the free exchanging of bitcoin worldwide.
In abiding with AML and OFAC standards, Marathon is effectively censoring people from participating in the network.
As free-market believers, most Bitcoiners ultimately trust that the market will handle itself, with game theory helping it gravitate to the most efficient side.
And most miners, which are mostly geographically dispersed outside of the U.S., have little to no reason to discriminate transactions based on American legislation.