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Bitcoin Is Having a Civil War as It Enters a Critical Month

bloomberg.com

41–50 of 334 posts

Re: Bitcoin Is Having a Civil War as It Enters a Critical Month

#41

This is a fight for control of Bitcoin. It is business interests on both sides fighting for a position of authority. SegWit2x is an attempt to remove control from the core dev team, which while technically strong is full of zealots with questionable motives and terrible management skills. Bitcoin ABC and Unlimited have their own parts to play as factions. It's getting tense, but it's been years in the making. Groups…

"I suspect that SegWit2x will end up taking over the network"

What? They had first release like yesterday, the project has released one tarball, no packaging, no very good marketing etc. The biggest marketers seem to be the tinfoil hat opponents who fear the fork so much that they speak about it everywhere.

I don't think it is at all likely that segwit2x client will gain support. Or if it will gain support, it will take years at this point for it to gain any considerable support.

The whole thins is totally exaggerated. People have nothing to talk about, so they will invent tinfoil hat scenarios and discuss those. Bitcoin protocol has staid fundamentally the same for many years and it is pretty likely that it will stay that way.

Re: Bitcoin Is Having a Civil War as It Enters a Critical Month

#42
post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

XT/Classic was a mere skirmish compared to this. On one side you have Chinese miners and one developer gunning for segwit2x because it gives them a significant advantage related to their hardware. On the other side you have the other dozen or so core developers who want a more conservative approach. As a side-effect this version levels the playing field for miners.

I'm not sure what you are talking about. Because what I see from my point of view is a dozen of Blockstream employees pushing for segwit, with barely no support from the community nor the miners. And on the other side I see a growing majority of miners, a growing majority of the community asking for a simple block size increase, wich is a matter of 10 lines modified, compared to 5 000 lines and a great bunch of compl…

"But I'm probably wasting my time with you, looking at your comment history you seems to be a typical pro-Blockstream troll."

Is there any need for this kind of incivility? Around here we don't call people with differing opinions a 'troll', we just respect the differences. This could easily have been written as "based on your posting history, I don't expect to change your mind".

Re: Bitcoin Is Having a Civil War as It Enters a Critical Month

#43
post #33

Bitcoin continues to evolve. With that comes growing pains. And internal struggles as it is mostly an open source project. But for Bloomberg to use a 'civil war' hyperbole signals fear from the establishment. Established capital more specifically. And really, that is bitcoin's biggest threat. Disclosure: I own bitcoin.

I wouldn't call a technical decision that threatens the monetary value of bitcoin a mere "internal struggle". If this can happen once, what's to prevent it from happening again over some other issue? How can anybody have confidence they'll be able to spend Bitcoins in the same way they do now?

We see this over and over again with OSS projects. That's actually kinda the point. If this split is allowed to happen, I assume that it will happen again because it's being treated as and OSS project (which it is) and not a currency (which it sort of is).

Re: Bitcoin Is Having a Civil War as It Enters a Critical Month

#44

This is a fight for control of Bitcoin. It is business interests on both sides fighting for a position of authority. SegWit2x is an attempt to remove control from the core dev team, which while technically strong is full of zealots with questionable motives and terrible management skills. Bitcoin ABC and Unlimited have their own parts to play as factions. It's getting tense, but it's been years in the making. Groups…

Good luck with that, I for one will be dumping any bitcoin ABC or unlimited coins. If it by some miracle ends up as the dominant chain, I will walk away from bitcoin for good.

Re: Bitcoin Is Having a Civil War as It Enters a Critical Month

#45

Bitcoin continues to evolve. With that comes growing pains. And internal struggles as it is mostly an open source project. But for Bloomberg to use a 'civil war' hyperbole signals fear from the establishment. Established capital more specifically. And really, that is bitcoin's biggest threat. Disclosure: I own bitcoin.

> for Bloomberg to use a 'civil war' hyperbole signals fear from the establishment. Established capital more specifically.

That may or may not be true, but it's definitely a non sequitur narrative. In this situation, it doesn't matter whether or not "the establishment" is fearful of Bitcoin. All that will ultimately matter is whether or not the "winners" of this debacle end up killing Bitcoin in the process, and that will necessarily play out in terms of markets.

>And really, that is bitcoin's biggest threat.

Only if it survives long enough to truly compete at the level of "established capital".

Re: Bitcoin Is Having a Civil War as It Enters a Critical Month

#46

This is a fight for control of Bitcoin. It is business interests on both sides fighting for a position of authority. SegWit2x is an attempt to remove control from the core dev team, which while technically strong is full of zealots with questionable motives and terrible management skills. Bitcoin ABC and Unlimited have their own parts to play as factions. It's getting tense, but it's been years in the making. Groups…

It isn't up to just the above parties, but also to the people who actually hold bitcoin. Those holders who prefer sound money will sell on the chain that isn't.

Re: Bitcoin Is Having a Civil War as It Enters a Critical Month

#47
After working in the space for about a year, after being a developer and enthusiast surrounding crypto since the early days of BTC this "bickering among core devs" is nothing new.

Any press or "talks" that say otherwise are either being influenced with serious bias or are simply reporting false information.

I like DLT tech, however, if bitcoin has shown us anything it's that once you solve the double-spend problem you're still left with an even more grotesque problem of governance.

People pick fun at ETH since it has a "single leader", but Vitalik is more of a back-seat conductor than a "grand leader". Also, most arguments of "bitcoin being a truly decentralized platform because our devs are decentralized" can easily be diffused by vaguely looking into how BlockStream operates...

The political shit-storm being paraded by BTC needs to end soon, we really don't need another 2-3 years of douchey BTC core devs arguing on the internet and bad-mouthing any project that isn't BTC.

Re: Bitcoin Is Having a Civil War as It Enters a Critical Month

#48

This is a fight for control of Bitcoin. It is business interests on both sides fighting for a position of authority. SegWit2x is an attempt to remove control from the core dev team, which while technically strong is full of zealots with questionable motives and terrible management skills. Bitcoin ABC and Unlimited have their own parts to play as factions. It's getting tense, but it's been years in the making. Groups…

Core developers never had control in the first place. No one has control; it's weird to see so many people applying authoritarian concepts to an anti-authoritarian system.

Re: Bitcoin Is Having a Civil War as It Enters a Critical Month

#50

Sorry if this is a stupid question, but why not both? It doesn't appear that the two strategies are mutually exclusive. Is it just that SegWitX2 is considered too rushed? Is it just that miners have a vested interest in maintaining influence? Personally it seems like smart contracts and other similar services beget an ecosystem that could swell the market cap by a significant amount, I assume miners would have a long…

> Is it just that SegWitX2 is considered too rushed?

https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/6h612o/can_someone... and https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/6hkuze/greg_maxwel...

and a long-term view i guess https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/6h612o/can_someone...

more broadly-- although with less explanation-- https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Segwit_support

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