
The Final Days of the Bitcoin Foundation? - petethomas
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-12-30/the-final-days-of-the-bitcoin-foundation-
======
ue_
Are there any examples of where Bitcoin has needed the Bitcoin foundation,
aside from promotion? I don't know much about Bitcoin, but I'm imagining the
Bitcoin Foundation as being analogous to the Linux Foundation.

~~~
Scarbutt
With out a foundation, how do you suggest the direction of the Bitcoin project
be managed? (Is not only about promoting Bitcoin).

~~~
icebraining
Different groups develop competing clients, when one proposes an incompatible
feature, the other groups and the users in general choose if they want to
implement it or not. Whichever direction the majority chooses is the direction
of Bitcoin.

At least to me, it sounds much more in line with the original conception of
Bitcoin than a central foundation managing its direction.

~~~
jgalt212
That's true, but an organization board can help those adoptions occur in a
more orderly and/or less acrimonious manner in case there are any serious
disputes.

------
Animats
And nothing of value was lost.

It's amazing how well Bitcoin works as a system despite the very high
percentage of crooks involved. That's a significant technical achievement.

~~~
Cyberdog
> the very high percentage of crooks involved

Is that really quantifiable as such? Based on my limited experiences with
cryptocurrencies, the vast majority of its usage is lawful, but people buying
hitmen and crack with bitcoin makes for a better story than people buying
pizzas and web hosting, so that's what's in the articles that get written.

------
joosters
Now tell us where all the money went...

~~~
pstrateman
I've got a pretty good idea..

[https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1pxiy3/peter_vesse...](https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1pxiy3/peter_vessenes_biggest_danger_to_bitcoin/)

~~~
at-fates-hands
one of the better quotes from the thread:

 _Just think for a minute how amazing Bitcoin is, that it can not only survive
but continue to grow despite the huge number of dipshits and saboteurs so
intimately associated with it._

~~~
bduerst
Isn't this a cognitive bias? How has bitcoin grown?

In 2015, Wordpress dropped support for it because there were too few
transactions to warrant it.

~~~
brighton36
Retail transactions are through the roof by almost all indicators

~~~
bduerst
You mean Overstock?

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pstrateman
The Bitcoin Foundation was founded and operated by criminals.

Bruce Fenton and others have done huge amounts of work to repair the
foundation and I commend them for their efforts.

However I cannot support an organization which continues to support bad
actors, to quote myself:

>As a lifetime Foundation member (and a technical contributor to Bitcoin) I
think it's within my rights to ask [that Gavin Andresen be removed as chief
scientist]

>Consider how frustrating misunderstandings like the below are to me:

>“...[Gavin Andresen is] still bitcoin’s official chief scientist, according
to the Bitcoin Foundation, the not-for-profit that oversees the project...”

>[http://www.wired.com/2015/08/bitcoin-schism-shows-genius-
ope...](http://www.wired.com/2015/08/bitcoin-schism-shows-genius-open-source/)

~~~
mbrock
Are you claiming Andresen is a criminal? If so, why?

~~~
chejazi
He's not a criminal but he stopped being the lead contributor to Bitcoin Core
to join the contentious Bitcoin XT project. The motivation for this project is
a debate about whether increasing the Bitcoin blocksize is an acceptable way
to address scalability. In general, it showcases dissent in the consensus
policy that governs the way Core changes are made.

More background on this: [https://bitcoinmagazine.com/articles/gavin-andresen-
i-might-...](https://bitcoinmagazine.com/articles/gavin-andresen-i-might-take-
over-lead-of-bitcoin-xt-1448486445)

~~~
pmorici
I don't think that is an accurate depiction of what happened. In reality a
company called Blockstream who has a financial interest in limiting Bitcoin's
block size has stacked the core dev team with people on it's payroll and they
are doing everything within their power to cripple Bitcoin so that they can
insert themselves as a middle man in Bitcoin transactions.

Gavin was not one of the devs who let themselves be bought off by Blockstream
and in his frustration over all the other core devs irrationality he has been
promoting solutions outside of core.

~~~
chejazi
Thanks for offering an alternate perspective on this. Could you clarify how
they make themselves a middleman in Bitcoin transactions?

~~~
toomim
Blockstream Liquid makes them a middleman:
[https://blockstream.com/2015/10/12/introducing-
liquid/](https://blockstream.com/2015/10/12/introducing-liquid/)

They also work on the lightning network, which creates middlemen.

In general, all Blockstream's products are solutions to the problems of (1)
bitcoin being hard to change/fork, and (2) the block size being small.
Blockstream's products are thus more relevant and useful if bitcoin is
difficult to improve, and has limited capacity.

This is because all Blockstream's products are built on Sidechains:
[https://blockstream.com/sidechains.pdf](https://blockstream.com/sidechains.pdf)
Rather than change bitcoin itself, a sidechain lets you create an alternative
set of rules for bitcoin, that re-uses the actual bitcoins from the main
chain, so that users can put their bitcoins on either set of rules. Sidechains
let users move coins between chains with different rulesets. Thus, Sidechains
are useful only if it is difficult to add desired features to Bitcoin itself.
All Blockstream products (like Liquid above) are implemented as Sidechains.

Thus, Blockstream's products will have no purpose unless Bitcoin is limited,
and difficult to change, creating a need for a Sidechain.

Blockstream employees unanimously oppose every proposed hard fork to bitcoin.

At last October's Bitcoin Dev Workshop in San Francisco (ironically run by the
Bitcoin Foundation), Blockstream CTO and Bitcoin Core Dev Greg Maxwell, who
invented most of the Sidechains tech, said on stage (video recording is online
somewhere) he was bummed that so few people use Sidechains, and that his
biggest surprise was how much work it takes to get applications in the
ecosystem (like wallets, blockchain.info, etc.) to support a Sidechain. He
needs people to have a good reason to switch to a Sidechain. If Bitcoin keeps
improving, there will be no good reason.

Blockstream employees unanimously oppose every proposed hard fork to bitcoin.
They are making it hard to improve bitcoin.

~~~
kanzure
> Blockstream Liquid makes them a middleman

He asked about Bitcoin transaction middlemanship, not alternative ledger
consensus systems. It should not be surprising that alternative ledgers exist
that provide some features that Bitcoin doesn't.

> They also work on the lightning network, which creates middlemen.

LN transactions are just zero-conf Bitcoin transactions with some extra
opcodes and defined behavior around the semantics of when certain transactions
can be verified. see [http://lightning.network/](http://lightning.network/)

> In general, all Blockstream's products are solutions to the problems of (1)
> bitcoin being hard to change/fork, and (2) the block size being small.
> Blockstream's products are thus more relevant and useful if bitcoin is
> difficult to improve, and has limited capacity.

Bitcoin is more useful if it's difficult to be "improved", period. Auto-update
mechanisms take away voluntary participation and this is too dangerous for a
financial system that is attempting to be decentralized (who's gonna
"authorize" the updates, eh?). So yes maybe Blockstream has an incentive to
assist with maintaining the current Bitcoin decentralization mechanisms... so
what?

> Blockstream employees unanimously oppose every proposed hard fork to
> bitcoin.

jtimon? sipa? dude you know these people, wtf.

> He needs people to have a good reason to switch to a Sidechain. If Bitcoin
> keeps improving, there will be no good reason.

No, he doesn't need a good reason for people to switch. He needs a reason for
people to use sidechains, thankfully he and everyone has many. This isn't
about switching -_-.

> If Bitcoin keeps improving, there will be no good reason.

That's like saying "if positive changes are made to bitcoin.git, there's no
reason to use sidechains"... That's not a reasonable argument.

> Blockstream employees unanimously oppose every proposed hard fork to
> bitcoin. They are making it hard to improve bitcoin.

They are opposed to hard-forks for many reasons, but perhaps most important
here is because they aren't in control of Bitcoin network hard-forks. And they
are unwilling to campaign to add those particular hard-forks into Bitcoin
Core. It's wrong to claim that Blockstream is making it hard to improve
Bitcoin when it's naturally hard to do so by design in the first place.

~~~
toomim
> jtimon? sipa? dude you know these people, wtf.

First, you're confusing me for my brother. It's a common mistake. He is
Jonathan Toomim, and I'm Michael. Together, we are... the Toomim Bros!!!
[https://toom.im](https://toom.im)

Now, you've written seven different statements here, but they aren't connected
to a main point. Could you put your thoughts together? Are you trying to
address whether Blockstream are middlemen?

~~~
kanzure
> First, you're confusing me for my brother. It's a common mistake.

I feel sort of cheated because you two use very similar HN usernames. You are
not as bad as the Rayhawk brothers, though, which I am convinced are all the
same person.

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as1ndu
Can someone educate me upon the use of the BTC foundation besides promotion? I
thought no one controls BTC!!! :(

~~~
oafitupa
The foundation is just a bunch of suits, whose only function is to educate
other suits (eg: law makers). No one controls Bitcoin.

