We've heard a lot of such "things that shall never be violated, even if the economic / mining majority are for it" from small-blockistan / thermos: "Anyone in Sub-Saharan Africa oppressed parts of Australia must be able to run a full node", "Must have a high nodecount that can entirely be run on Raspberry Pi's", "Must never be forked without consensus" etc. We know that some of those don't make sense; while some others, like fixed supply, are shared across the ideological gap by both sides. And in practice, these principles are only as solid as the community's will to keep them. But still, we all have reasons why we got into Bitcoin in the first place, reasons that, if broken, will make us lose all interest in Bitcoin.

For me personally, there are just two:

• Fixed supply: There must never be more than 21 million coins in existence.

• Permissionless, both narrowly defined (no central authority doling out permissions to the network) and in practice (tx fee and initial investment low enough for anyone to use it; can be anonymized).

There are other desirable traits of Bitcoin - I support many of them - but ultimately they all serve to spread Bitcoin, with these two principles on board, to as many people as possible.

What are you personal "inviolable" rules, rules that, if violated, will make you say "this is not Bitcoin, I'm out forever"? Why?