Overstock CEO Calls Bitcoin Code "Slop"

[MicroGuy]

On Saturday, Overstock’s CEO Patrick Byrne delivered a riveting keynote speech to the participants of this year’s Bitcoin in the Beltway conference.

In his much anticipated appearance, he announced that Overstock would be donating 3% of the company’s Bitcoin sales to organizations working to promote cryptocurrency around the world. He also admitted that he was quite cautious about integrating Bitcoin at first, but has been pleasantly surprised by the enthusiasm shown by customers.

When an audience member asked whether he believed that in the future a select number of popular altcoins could serve as competing currencies, Byrne responded that he favors competing currencies in theory and feels like they could truly compete with Bitcoin as long as they offer superior technical features.

He then went on to acknowledge that the core Bitcoin code contains a lot of “slop,” which he speculated could cause potential logistical problems for Bitcoin in the future.

Full Story: http://altcoinpress.com/2014/06/overstock-ceo-core-bitcoin-code-sloppy/

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[lihuajkl]

hope the dev team will patch the "slope" code soon.

[TaunSew]

I assume he must be referring to downloading the blockchain.  The blockchain size is growing at a fast rate.  It's also extremely impractical for most people to download a 20 gigabyte blockchain.  I couldn't imagine what the case will be when Bitcoin could be 100 gigabytes in a few years.

[Mister S]

Some people I know download 20 gigs of porn in a night, why not the blockchain.

Seriously, I hear too many excuses for not running a full node.

[Cranky4u]

carrying the blockchain on a mobile phone is not what most people would consider as portable, just chewing up to much space. Is there anyway for 'average Joe' to carry a shortened block chain or transactions of the chain without the need to have a degree in computer science?

[keithers]

It sounds like he may be just referring to it like that because he himself may not understand the code

[Cicero2.0]

I remember when I first downloaded my wallet. It literally took over a day to sync. That is some slop.

[Walsoraj]

Ripple.

[rext]

I remember when I first downloaded my wallet. It literally took over a day to sync. That is some slop.

Wow that long?

[jubalix]

20 gigs is not that much any more...but still quite a bit.....this is really quite scary.....

I used a mac se 30 circa 1989 and and lived happily with 20 megs and heard of a mythical 1 gig HD that blew my mind at the time

[TaunSew]

Well the "slop" of waiting a day to download a blockchain is too much for most people, especially new users to Bitcoin.  Have to realize that not everyone is a computer science major, a lot of this "technological hiccups" are barriers to Bitcoin adoption.  If Bitcoin supposedly wants to tap into the $500 billion remittance market, you're going to have to dumb it down a lot (no offended intended  )

[Confessions]

The download isn't the problem, its the time it takes your computer to process the information from the download.  You can download the blockchain from a torrent file, and have it pretty quick.  Your computer has to process all that info still.....and it can take over a day. a lot of the time.

[rext]

The download isn't the problem, its the time it takes your computer to process the information from the download.  You can download the blockchain from a torrent file, and have it pretty quick.  Your computer has to process all that info still.....and it can take over a day. a lot of the time.

Ouch, 20gb of processing, you need to have some killer pc for that to be done quickly

[MineForeman.com]

Slop?

I always thought that the bitcoind reference code was almost brutaly breaf.  It sticks to the coding conventions and EVERYTHING has test cases.  I would like to see what he refers to as "tight code".

Neil

[Confessions]

The download isn't the problem, its the time it takes your computer to process the information from the download.  You can download the blockchain from a torrent file, and have it pretty quick.  Your computer has to process all that info still.....and it can take over a day. a lot of the time.

Ouch, 20gb of processing, you need to have some killer pc for that to be done quickly

It not like processing a movie, or a picture.  The cpu has to process the numbers, and it takes a long long time.  Try it, before you get all sarcastic.

[zimmah]

I think the initiative of overstock is really nice.

I could do with a little sponsoring as well, about 1 bitcoin would be sufficient even to get myself some promotional material.

Good to see such a large company is not only bullish on bitcoin but even actively promoting it

[bryant.coleman]

It sounds like he may be just referring to it like that because he himself may not understand the code

Don't be arrogant and rude. There is a lot of truth in what he said. And he is justified by the recent panic shown by the Bitcoin users, over GHash touching the 51% mark.

[zetaray]

I am sure any source code will contain some slop before the code is optimised. Slop may come from quick fixes, redundant code kept as a backup, or even testing code for a new feature. The open-source code is a collaboration effort, it may have some slop, the core has work well so far.

[runam0k]

Hopefully this means he'll be donating large amounts to the core dev effort.  All big businesses with an interest in bitcoin should be doing the same.  They should be running full nodes too.

[lihuajkl]

Byrne is still proud of the decision that he made to provide BTC payment. It has been welcomed by customers until now. The message he gave would encourage wide adoption of BTC by the variety of merchants.