Jorge Stolfi explains Bitcoin versus Bitcoin Cash versus Segwit2x

Feel free to go into detail about what's wrong with the analogy, rather than skipping straight to ad hominem:

> ideologically opposed to bitcoin

This is otherwise known as "knowing what he's talking about", which he does to a sufficient degree that the SEC reached out and asked him for an expanded comment on the Winklevoss ETF application last year - it's 27 pages that makes a pretty good critical book on Bitcoin in itself: https://www.sec.gov/comments/sr-batsbzx-2016-30/batsbzx20163...

He knows the area and the details, and you can't credibly claim he doesn't.

Like I said, it's an oversimplification beyond recognition of the actual situation. It's the equivalent of a 30 second sound bite covering a major contentious issue that has been going on for years and this "explanation" doesn't contribute to the understanding of what is going on and hence doesn't deserve a detailed response.

All I'm saying is he has an agenda and people should keep that in mind when reading this.

You still haven't stated what it is, let alone substantiated your ad hominem. Please do so.

(Particularly if you're going to refuse to say what's wrong with his actual words while you try to attack his character - together, this gives the strong impression you've got nothing.)

Makes you wonder why he wrote a 27 page document full of economic arguments to the SEC and boasted about it the notorious anti-bitcoin subreddit /r/buttcoin.

> I'm interested what agenda you are speaking of.

Stolfi has been a long time critic of bitcoin because he determined it could not scale because it is an inefficient system. I can understand that argument because it is true from a computer science perspective; bitcoin is a broadcast network where every node has to process all transactions made. No issue there. But given that fact, doesn't it seem strange then that he is actively participating (in a positive way) in conversation with the people (bitcoin cash supporters) who want to make the bitcoin system more inefficient (broadcast more "redundant" data) by his own definition?

Further, he has been a vocal critic of technologies that have to potential to fix his main concern with scaling bitcoin, namely the lightning network (which is practically not possible with bitcoin cash). Not to mention his use of derogatory terms like "Blockstream/Core" for the open source project that has massively increased the performance and capabilities (and thus scaling) of bitcoin, and calling privacy improvements to the system "money laundering" techniques.

Another particular thing with Stofli is in how many ways he thinks bitcoin is illegal (which has nothing to do with his scaling argument) as you can listen to in this interview: https://soundcloud.com/bitcoinuncensored/buttcoin-vs-bitcoin...

I could go on and on with these examples. If you are interested you could take a look at his comment history on reddit: https://www.reddit.com/user/jstolfi (all my examples and more are in there).

His actions are very inconsistent with his arguments and I don't think he can be trusted for that reason. Gregory Maxwell, one of the most respected and accomplished bitcoin developers, had this to say about him: "Sometimes you encounter a person whos opposition means that you're doing something right. Jorge Stolfi is one of those people."

What makes him an expert on bitcoin in particular? What bitcoin related works has he published? What contributions has he made? What role does he play in the "expert" community? At what conferences has he spoken? What makes him qualified to comment on bitcoin economics (or economics in general)?

Anyway, I think this is going nowhere. I have seen this exact discussion many times and the end result has never been satisfying for either party. Let's just say the experiment is ongoing and time will tell what the conclusion will be.

As for his agenda, I think he is trying to stagnate progress by pouring gasoline on the fire that is the schism in the community. I don't know what his exact motivation is, but my suspicion from reading the SEC document and his comment history is that he thinks that there is something morally wrong with bitcoin. I admit he has some valid technical points, but it is suspicious that he is so negative about it. You would expect that someone who spends so much time thinking about bitcoin could come up with some ideas on how to make it better, but so far he has not produced anything. There are many bitcoin skeptics out there and I don't mind that, it's part of the experiment. But Stolfi is a special case, he is extremely determined.

Thanks for the discussion, I'm out.