
What did Bitcoin Core contributors ever do for us? - sonkol
https://medium.com/@jfnewbery/what-did-bitcoin-core-contributors-ever-do-for-us-39fc2fedb5ef
======
jnordwick
Why do people seem to assume that those most capable of implementing the
cryptography, networking, or other code are also those most capable of
understanding the economics of cryptocurrencies or determining their future?

Most of the arguments against the core team revolve around the economics and
future of the coin, but the tech team seems to think that somehow their coding
experience gives them insight into that.

Bitcoin seems like technically great but it fails on many of the economic
aspects (e.g. making a currency with a fixed amount basically ensures it can
never be used to write long term counteracts in).

~~~
twblalock
> Why do people seem to assume that those most capable of implementing the
> cryptography, networking, or other code are also those most capable of
> understanding the economics of cryptocurrencies or determining their future?

I guess I'll give the blunt answer: many proponents of cryptocurrency have
views on economics, politics, society, law, and contracts that are ignorant of
the way those things really work. Many really do believe that currencies,
transactions, and contracts can be implemented entirely by computer programs
and that governments and courts should have no jurisdiction over such things.

If you don't believe me, go to some of the active crypto forums and get
involved in political discussions. You'll see an astounding mix of techno-
utopianism, extreme libertarianism, and baseless conspiracy theories about
fiat money and governments in general.

The blockchain is an interesting technical achievement, and so are smart
contracts, but they are not a replacement for laws and governments.
Unfortunately, a lot of people think they are. Some people even insist that
bitcoin doesn't have governance, but that's clearly not the case because the
current controversy about the core developers is exactly about governance.

I bring this up because these kinds of beliefs are the reason people in the
bitcoin community think the programmers who implement bitcoin are capable of
solving the economic problems -- they reject the idea that there are any
economic or social problems facing bitcoin that can't be solved with the
underlying technology. They don't accept that these are social problems with
social solutions.

~~~
brightball
I've never used bitcoin but one of the core appeals as I understood it was
mathematically limited supply to create an inflation proof currency. There
seem to be lots of fluctuations in the price but eventually it hit a point of
relative stability (in theory at least) with value that increases slightly
relative the rate that the dollar inflates.

If that's the case then it certainly does the job.

There are a lot of people out there who are very aware of how their saved
money loses value and actively want an alternative that feels "safe". I don't
know that Bitcoin is that alternative, but it's definitely trying to be and
even I have to admit has been far more successful than I ever would have
expected.

~~~
twblalock
The cap on mining is actually a good example of an inflexible technical
solution for a problem that is better solved through flexible governance.
There are several problems with it:

Inflation can be a good thing. It can be used to combat deflation, and the
absence of inflation can lead to stagnation via the paradox of thrift. There
are certain central bank policies that encourage inflation and are known to
work pretty well, including QE, which was demonized by a lot of people but has
now been proven an effective aid in the recovery from the 2008 crash.

The bitcoin approach focuses on the money supply only, but there are other
factors to inflation. There is general agreement among economists that the
money supply is the key driver of inflation in the long term, but in the short
term, other factors can be involved.

Inflation is possible with a static supply of money, because the amount of
money in circulation (versus the amount of money in savings accounts or bonds,
or otherwise locked up) can change.

Inflation can also happen even with a static supply of money and no changes in
the amount of money in circulation. An example is an oil price shock, caused
by an embargo: oil is an input into many manufacturing processes, as well as
people's cars, so a general increase in the prices of goods and services can
be expected.

So, the bitcoin approach takes away some valuable monetary policy tools and it
doesn't actually prevent inflation in the short term. People shouldn't believe
that their bitcoins are protected from inflation.

~~~
elmar
I have replied to a similar thread on HN recently here is the link.

Inflation the Hidden Tax

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14828655](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14828655)

~~~
mikeash
I don't understand what the big deal is there. I can understand it in a
hyperinflation situation, but when inflation is ~2%, surely this hidden tax is
insignificant compared to the more visible, explicit taxes?

~~~
elmar
let's do some assumptions:

\- the 2% inflation number is completely wrong and real inflation is around
5%~10%

\- with no government monetary intervention we should have deflation let's
assume around 5%

the delta is now 10%~15% looks less insignificant.

~~~
mikeash
How long does it take for new money to get into the hands of the average
person? I'd think a couple of months. A 15% inflation delta then means an
"invisible tax" of maybe 3%. Not very important. And that's ignoring the
highly questionable nature of those stated assumptions.

~~~
elmar
I have seen studies where it could take up to 2 years for the new money to
completely penetrate the economic system.

Unfortunately currently don't have the links, I will try to post it later.

------
colordrops
Some context would help here.

~~~
SkyMarshal
A meme has developed among some in Bitcoin - "Fire Core", aka fire the core
dev team who have contributed most of the code to the canonical Bitcoin repo
([http://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin](http://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin)) and
stewarded Bitcoin for the last few years
([https://bitcoincore.org](https://bitcoincore.org)).

The argument is that they've moved too slow on important things like
scalability, blocked a simple blocksize increase hard fork that would have
added capacity, and that as a result Ethereum is catching up and on the verge
of overtaking Bitcoin
([http://duckduckgo.com?q=flippening](http://duckduckgo.com?q=flippening)).

The counterargument is that there's no other technically credible team in
Bitcoin, despite all the prior attempts to "fire" and replace Core - Bitcoin
XT, Bitcoin Unlimited, etc. - and that "firing" Core is akin to killing the
goose that lays the golden egg.

~~~
fpgaminer
> The counterargument is that there's no other technically credible team in
> Bitcoin

You forgot the most important counterargument. That they _did_ move extremely
fast on scalability. They released a masterpiece of engineering, SegWit, which
doubles the blocksize, improves efficiency, enables future efficiency gains,
and a laundry list of other improvements ... all while being a softfork. And,
IIRC, that was all developed, tested, and released in _very_ short order.

~~~
qznc
SegWit is in use by LiteCoin for a year already and the first proposal for
Bitcoin was at least two years ago.

~~~
the-dude
Compared to changes of traditional currencies, two years is incredibly fast.

~~~
lclarkmichalek
What? Central banks can change fundamental properties about a currency
overnight. i.e.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swiss_franc#2011.E2.80.932014:...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swiss_franc#2011.E2.80.932014:_big_movements_and_capping)

~~~
snissn
Moving is a knob is a lot different than building a knob.

------
wmf
This "fire Core" situation reminds me of Uber. You can be killing it 24/7 and
still get fired if you cause enough non-technical damage.

~~~
twblalock
Bitcoin is supposed to be a currency, so there are many non-technical aspects
of it that need to be properly handled. If the people working on the code take
it upon themselves to make the non-technical decisions too, they need to be
held responsible for the outcome.

This really gets at the heart of my dislike for cryptocurrency -- most
proponents believe it's supposed to be decentralized and free from the control
of government, but it's actually centralized under the control of a small
group of unelected programmers (who seem to misunderstand how human societies,
currencies, and contracts actually work), and there is no recourse when they
make bad decisions except to fork the blockchain and the code. It's really a
step backwards in terms of governance compared to, say, fiat currency with
democratic governance. This applies to most cryptocurrencies I've seen, not
just bitcoin.

~~~
icebraining
It's not, though; the developers can write the code, but they can't force
people to upgrade.

~~~
wmf
They can withhold features that people want by refusing to code them, which is
what one of the controversies is about.

~~~
vertex-four
But other people can code them, and people as a whole can choose what software
they want to run?

------
stuaxo
This is the first I heard of pruning, I had to delete bitcoinqt when it got
too big for my laptops SSD over a year ago.

------
sametmax
"What did X ever do for us?" is the standard catch phrase of this guy in any
pirate movie wanting to take command of the ship.

It's not the words of somebody who wants to help anybody, just somebody
wanting the power.

~~~
hokkos
It is clearly satire and a Monty Python reference, how can you be so wrong ?

~~~
dang
Many (maybe even most) of the misunderstandings on HN have to do with people
talking across national or regional lines without being aware of it. I don't
know, but it would be natural if that were the case here.

------
woah
The whole point of open source software is that you can fork a project away
from the original developers.

~~~
twblalock
But the point of a currency is to be a stable and widely accepted medium of
exchange. Forking undermines both of those goals.

If the US dollar forked, or an EU country left the Euro, it would widely be
considered a disaster and a failure of politics and governance. Why should
bitcoin be held to a different standard?

~~~
beaner
Just seems like part of an evolutionary process. Very rarely is software
released where version 1.0 is perfect. Maybe if government currencies allowed
for these things, they would also be better by now.

This is part of the reason why bitcoin remains highly speculative. People
point this out like it's a bad thing - the only people who have it are just
investors, speculating. But this is part of the process that bootstraps
bitcoin's value, so that when it does become more practical to use, actual
value is being transferred.

~~~
twblalock
> Just seems like part of an evolutionary process. Very rarely is software
> released where version 1.0 is perfect. Maybe if government currencies
> allowed for these things, they would also be better by now.

Let's use the US dollar as an example. In what ways do you think it could be
improved if people could fork it?

~~~
beaner
As one example, maybe we would have an alternative to ACH, which would allow
money to be settled in seconds, instead of several business days. Maybe we
could have this at the protocol level (banks) instead of having to use private
3rd party software (Venmo) which emulates this feature but reduces our
privacy.

~~~
omarchowdhury
[https://www.zellepay.com/](https://www.zellepay.com/)
[https://www.zellepay.com/participating-banks-and-credit-
unio...](https://www.zellepay.com/participating-banks-and-credit-unions)

~~~
beaner
"1 Transactions made between financial institutions in the Zelle NetworkSM
typically complete within minutes. If your recipient does not have access to
Zelle through their bank or credit union, transactions could take between 1
and 3 days to complete.

Zelle is available to U.S. bank account holders only."

~~~
omarchowdhury
The participating banks count for a majority share of US bank accounts.

