
Gavin Andresen, the Most Powerful Person in the World of Bitcoin - prostoalex
http://www.technologyreview.com/news/527051/the-man-who-really-built-bitcoin/
======
drcode
Yeah, Gavin was a guest on EconTalk podcast back in 2011, when bitcoins were
still $1. I listened to him talk a few minutes and said "Whatever that guy is
doing I'm investing in" even though I didn't _really_ understand Bitcoin until
much later...

I still think it's no coincidence that Gavin is spearheading Bitcoin- He is
impressive because he's very down-to-earth but still supernaturally smart. I'm
not sure Bitcoin would have gone anywhere without him.

~~~
AndrewWarner
I think this is the interview you're referring to.

There's a transcript below the download link.

[http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2014/05/gavin_andresen.html](http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2014/05/gavin_andresen.html)

~~~
eco
Nah, that's a new one.

Here's the one from 2011:

[http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2011/04/andresen_on_bit.htm...](http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2011/04/andresen_on_bit.html)

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exo762
There is a plan in progress that will fix issue with big blocks being a
problem for miners. This is a first step of scaling Bitcoin to the level of
thousands transactions per second.

And it's also a great read.

[https://gist.github.com/gavinandresen/e20c3b5a1d4b97f79ac2](https://gist.github.com/gavinandresen/e20c3b5a1d4b97f79ac2)

------
sanj
I was wondering why he changed his name:

[http://www.skypaint.com/baby/andresen.html](http://www.skypaint.com/baby/andresen.html)

~~~
Luc
What's wrong with Cooke and Bell exactly? I guess I need it spelled out.

~~~
akgerber
Cooll and Belke are both perfectly fine joint names, if they don't want to
hyphenate.

------
d136o
Interesting, there's another Silicon Graphics alum. Other Silicon Graphics
people include: Jim Clark and Ben Horowitz.

~~~
lanstein
Ken Coleman.

[http://blogs.wsj.com/venturecapital/2013/04/11/ken-
coleman-j...](http://blogs.wsj.com/venturecapital/2013/04/11/ken-coleman-
joins-andreessen-horowitz-as-special-adviser/)

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jdmitch
_Andresen has an alternative explanation for why there won’t be big changes in
the way Bitcoin works. After the transaction issue is resolved, the work of
looking after its code will increasingly be a job for caretakers, not master
builders, he says._

Doesn't Andresen's response reflect more of how Bitcoin status quo will be
maintained rather than actually addressing _why_ it won't change much?

This also seems to ignore the ways in which so-called "Bitcoin 2.0" uses of
the Bitcoin-platform-as-ledger will affect the actual nature of the platform,
as these uses have yet to be employed on any large scale yet.

------
qwerta
> Then he encountered Bitcoin in 2010 ... at the time and extremely finicky to
> get ahold of and use.

Excuse me, but mining back them was extremely simple. I could be millionaire
if I would not lost my wallet.

~~~
dsil
That's part of being "finicky".

~~~
gkoberger
I think it was a joke.

------
pjbrunet
Besides the point of developers' influence, isn't the blockchain getting
bigger and therefore easier to filter/block, hypothetically?

~~~
slapresta
I'm not following, sorry. What's the relation between its size and the ability
to filter it?

~~~
pjbrunet
Something is more likely to "slip between the cracks" if it's small. It's an
analogy I heard in a Jason Calacanis interview several years ago, that the
blockchain is smaller than a pirated video and therefore more difficult to
detect.

------
jafaku
> Peter Todd, a developer who has contributed to the Bitcoin project, says
> Andresen seems in more of a hurry than others involved with the project to
> tweak Nakamoto’s design

Peter Troll. The guy never gets tired of derailing discussions and slowing
down all development on github issues. It's always about bringing completely
unrelated technical or economical issues, for the sake of saying "look I'm
smart!". He also loves to imagine conspiracies, like the block size issue
(Nakamoto didn't want to keep it at 1MB forever, but Peter says he says he did
and even created a website just for that :s). And he is always accepting
donations of course, and contracts with altcoins (they get the press -useful
for a quick pump/dump-, he gets the money).

~~~
contingencies
Your response is about the person, not the argument.

I tend to agree: the whole receipts mess is a good example. Bitcoin really
should not expand its scope that far - it's inelegant and a bad idea (vs. "do
one thing and do it well") - and Gavin has been its champion.

------
dang
We changed the title to that of the HTML doc because it is a tad less baity.

~~~
walterbell
Are there good examples of titles which were changed to be less baity than the
title of the HTML document? Or a "best practices" guide to titles?

~~~
dang
Two examples from today:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8182754](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8182754)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8183220](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8183220)

I'm not sure they're great examples, though. The thing we try hardest to do is
use language from the article and not make anything up. You can almost always
use a subtitle or something from the first paragraph.

The definition of a good title for HN is accurate and neutral, which is the
opposite of misleading or linkbait.

~~~
walterbell
Thanks, this is the first time I've heard of an active response to linkbait.
This could become a web service that maps article titles to their HN
replacements, could be used to rewrite tweets via an app or browser extension.
Also enables statistics on publishers & topics.

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saltyknuckles
At first I read "Gavin Belson..."

~~~
f0under
Same here. Got excited and checked the post out. Glad i did.

