Agreed.

While I think that Bitcoin will survive the potential risks of CTV, I never liked the idea of increasing unknown factors.

Perhaps I am wrong in my opposition to CTV and perhaps CTV might be overall beneficial for Bitcoin. Still, we need to think adversially regarding potential risks that could be used to harm the network.

1. Expanding the scripting capabilities. We can expect pros and cons here and it is hard to foresee what these will be.

2. The possibility of creating closed whitelisting loops.

After thinking the second point through over the last few weeks, I am no longer concerned with this scenario. Yet I will share my general thinking process of why I have changed my mind.

As for point 2, if I were to steelman the pro-CTV position, we could argue that all functions that improve security for decentralized Bitcoin users, also can be used by governments to increase the security of government-owned bitcon.

What secures *our* bitcoin as liberty advicates also secures government owned bitcoin, and vice versa. This is an unavoidable and fair situation that benefit Bitcoin.

A hypthetical worst case scenario:

The US, Canada, EU and Australia joins together to prevent bitcoin withdrawals from all exchanges within their respective jurisdictions.

This would not impact the Bitcoin network and sovereign Bitcoin users, but a lot of customers at exchanges would suffer.

Let's say that in this tyrannical scenario, the users of exchanges are only allowed to withdraw their capital in the form of CBDCs, while the exchanges end up holding the exchange-stored bitcoin.

We could then formulate multiple strategies for this alliance of the US and its partners to keep the mentioned exchange-stored bitcoin from being returned to their rightful owners.

One strategy could be via multi-sigs, which of course already exists. If a multi-sig requires signatures from both the US, Canada and the EU, it could be hard to overturn this decision via changing the laws in a single jurisdiction such as the US or the EU.

Another strategy could be to lock in the exchange-stored bitcoin into an unbreakable whitelisting loop, where the US, Canada, EU and Australia all include each other's addresses in a closed whitelisting loop system. If the government of the US is sued and ordered by the supreme court to give back user's bitcoin, it may not be able to.

On the other hand, if this were the case, the US could be forced to buy new bitcoin from the market in order to satisfy customer demands. This would make the whole closed whitelisting loop pointless, apart from it being ineffective from a global trade perspective.

It seems to me that my previous concern over closed whitelisting loops is not valid since it cannot function as a strategy for governments to abolish private property rights of bitcoin users.

My conclusion therefore is that closed whitelisting loops cannot become a threat to Bitcoin.

I am still critical of CTV, but less so than before. 

 Yes, and arguably any forced whitelisting makes non-whitelisted bitcoin more valuable. It’s terrible for people in those jurisdictions but doesn’t affect the bitcoin network as a whole. 

I believe devs should follow the principle of, “first, do no harm”. 

If there is potential risk, then we need to find a different way. Nobody can assess the magnitude of the risk. 

We need to think long term and protect bitcoin for future generations. 

 Absolutely.

What solved my critique of the risk of whitelisting loops was when I considered that a court may force exchanges to return user-owned bitcoin - even if that means buying new bitcoin from the free market at a higher exchange rate. This makes the strategy of closed whitelisting loops completely toothless. 

 “If there is potential risk, then we need to find a different way.”

There is such thing. 

Again I agree with the sentiment of extreme conservatism, but not to the point of losing touch with reality. Just the very nature of a soft fork, even with the most mundane and neutered change we could muster, is a serious risk.