Bitcoin Forum

Source: http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/37vg8y/is_the_blockstream_company_the_reason_why_4_core/crqbd78


June 25, 2015 Update: Gregory Maxwell responded to this thread...

Another misleading title. :-\

Which part ? It is quoted from his comment as it is...

Nobody who publically threatens to sell all their bitcoins will ever sell of their bitcoins, something just doesn't add up in that equation.

That, I believe, is kinda true. Jed McCaleb threatened to sell off his Ripple holding, which he never sold.

Yup.  When you are serious about something like that and have truly lost all will you'd just silently disapear.  Its a call for a rally, perhaps signs we are in the anger stage.

You took two things which Maxwell told and made it one-like. This will make people think in a different way. Moreover, he didn't tell "I will sell my coins and will move on with other things", instead he told, "if Bitcoin goes a centralizing route, I will find other things to work on". Both are different.

Do u mean a price rally ? In any case, I can see the outcome of this fork controversy is profit. There may be three outcome...

i. Both chains survive for some time -  Sell your coins on both chain. Double profit.

ii. Gavin wins - US merchants and new adoptors are with him. They'll start buying as Hearn & Gavin will now control the code.

iii. Gmaxwell wins - Old big holders are with him. Core remains. Gavin's out. All anti-US millionaires from China & Russia will start buying.

Moral of the story: Anyone who buys and hold till the fork happens, will walk out with profit.

If you read the full statement that he has made, it'd be clear to you that he considers the adoption of Bitcoin-XT as the centralized route.

Yes. Changing to something like "if Bitcoin-XT is adopted, Gregory Maxwell will find other things to work on" or something. The current title is misleading IMHO.

Have you not read his post? Are you having trouble understanding ti?
Changing the title to anything else would be misleading. The title is correct, as Maxwell has exactly stated that he will sell out and find other things to work on if we follow the path of Bitcoin XT.
The situation is terrible right now.
Update: It might be partially misleading although changing it would also make it misleading, he did however state that he would see most of his Bitcoins and move on.

This is wrong. Two chains will never survive, although there will be a potential time period to sell coins (not necessarily though).
It is much more likely that the whole ecosystem will be abandoned rather than Gavin wining. Look at the drama now. Would you really stick with Gavin and Bitcoin XT which has weakened security?


There is also this. I agree that something has to be implemented to fix this as soon as possible. Implemented into the Core..

When the 1MB maxes out and confirmation times blow out, and the press articles appear savaging the "community" that failed, the ensuing PR disaster, and price collapse, a lot of full nodes will go dark - and then Gregory Maxwell will see the route to centralization. He might say "oops I didn't expect that", but it will be too late.

Another threatens thread, yuppie! Pleas guys, stop to use the word 'threatens' in the title.

---

He simple wants to sell some bitcoin, it is not a "threaten" .. example - I will say : if the price will not reach 250 dollars in the next 2 weeks I can sell most of my coins. He is also not obliged to work as volunteer for bitcoin, this should be clare from the beginning.. he is also free to leave or stay.

I'm unclear on how going the XT path would make it centralized.

It is not that GMaxwell and other core devs did not agree with the problem of 1 MB cap. But, they are proposing a different solution to handle this, i.e. use of www.lightning.network and sidechains, which blockstream is working on. Though, I am not sure, how far that work is done. But, increase of cap to 20MB only delays the issue for a few more years. This is not a permanent solution as Gavin agreed too. What GMaxwell is saying is, if we do not implement the permanent solution sooner using sidechains & lightning.network and delay it for a few years, then bitcoin might grow too big to implement a fork.

Because it will be needed more bandwidth, and a lot of people don't have access to it (node,etc...).

Because XT is in control of Hearn & Gavin and if it wins the mass adoption and can outshine QT, then they wont need to discuss or honor the opinion of other core devs anymore. It will simply go the routes merchants & regulatory bodies want. The current change they are proposing to win mass adoption is aparently harmless. But, the next changes might include good coin/bad coin segration and a few more that will then go unchalenged. Fungibility of coins will probably be challenged in the name of certain country's national security. There comes centralization.

I beg to differ. Gregory just "threatens" to find something other to work on. This is fine, it's his decision after all. He doesn't like the way the whole Bitcoin project is headed, so he'll just do something else.
He doesn't state that he will sell out, though. Rather, he believes that the proposed changes to Bitcoin might be perceived as suicidal for Bitcoin, which is why he would consider it a wise move to sell his Bitcoins before they depreciate.
At least that's the way I understand his words. Maybe I'm just nitpicking, but I find that difference important enough to be noted.

Two chains might survive, but I too, doubt it. For a while, both might coexist, with the consequence of the value of Bitcoins in both networks together being roughly the same as the Bitcoins in one network now. For the exchange rate, this might mean a halving if both networks are of roughly equal size.
I believe it's much more likely that one of the chains will be significantly larger than the other from the beginning, probably something like 90/10 or even more. The larger one will most probably be valued more or less the same as before, while the other will depreciate rapidly, up to a point where it's no longer worthwhile to mine it or do anything meaningful with it.

So the question really is, which network will be larger?
As the old saying goes, just follow the money.
The larger network will be the one that's embraced by businesses like BitPay, large mining pools etc.
And I doubt that that's going to be the one without Gavin.

The "old" network might survive as something like a sect of the true faith of Satoshi, though. Which would make it a rather interesting social experiment ;)

That's something most people can agree on, but they just can't agree upon the "how". Unfortunately, that's precisely the reason why Gavin has to take the steps he's taking right now.

They have said that sidechains are much more for experimental development (replacing the need for alt-coins), not for scaling.
Lightning Network is big and complex and will not be deployed any time soon, maybe in 3 years, or 2 if lucky.
However, the 1MB will be causing serious delays in tx confirmations within 1 year. So, an increase, even to 5MB or 10MB will buy the time needed for LN to be fully developed and deployed. Personally, I like what LN offers, I want to see it succeed as it will enhance Bitcoin. But I would rather have it enhance a healthy Bitcoin than one that is crippled and under a PR disaster cloud.

Why won't Core Dev buy the few years needed to bring LN and other off-chain solutions to the point where they are taking volume?

Why even discuss this shit?! Let's DUMP it to HELL!

I doubt if anyone holding 100+ BTC will dump in this situation. They simply make double profit by dumping after then fork, ones with Bitcoin-QT chain and again with Bitcoin-XT chain. Anyone having minimum understanding of bitcoin trading will now buy :)

So if Maxwell doesn't want to fork and create a 20MB+ blocksize and stay with 1, what are his proposed solutions?

No sane investor would buy Bitcoin. Both forks will be worthless 100%.
Buy coins for 200$ now so you can sell Bitcoin later twice for 5$ each?

GTFO you're an ass.

Anything without logical explanation is pure BS from AltCoin shills.

this thread should be moved to TRASH .. "that's just my own opinion".  8)

So I keep seeing threads titles like
"Gregory Maxwell threatens to sell his bitcoins and find other things to work on" (... and so bitcoin is doomed)
or
"Gavin Threatens to Quit Bitcoin Development and Join Hearn's Fork" (... and so bitcoin is doomed)

Are those threads for real? if so, What kind of decentralized currency is this??

I wasn't around much lately and apparently I missed out on something big. What's Bitcoin XT fork? What/whose emails got leaked? Is there any dedicated thread about that?

Try to report it, but I doubt it will be moved (good luck).



It's the coin of the insecure people, with a simple fork/proposal you can unleash these type of topics around all the forum.



No, I don't think. BitcoinXT is only a name gave by Gavin in these days... but if you use the google search function ( keyword site:bitcointalk.org) you can find a lot of thread about the 20MB fork.

Here is the Reddit post linked in the OP archived, just in case. There seems to be a strong conflict between prominent members of the community. We can't be sure about how this is going to end.

https://archive.is/jyf0v https://archive.is/aeUdQ
 
Most certainly, all of us have invested a lot of time and effort into bitcoin. Reading the words of a man that has been working full time on bitcoin commitments and seeing talk about the community ''commenting suicide'' made me shiver. Certainly not the brightest times in the history of bitcoin.

Conflict is part of human nature, and we've probably gotten used to overdoses of drama within the bitcoin community. But the recent happenings are not light-hearted events in my opinion. As it was revealed the actions of few men could potentially shake bitcoin up bitcoin like it's an altcoin. Actions that from what is seems were prepared for a year's time. What's equally shocking to me is that the bitcoin community of Reddit showed minimal criticism and ready to accept experimental changes that could be proven dangerous for bitcoin.

Gregory recently came up with a solution, which Gavin found very interesting, and tried to work from it, but somehow he got no further useful feedback and the proposal has languished.
http://sourceforge.net/p/bitcoin/mailman/message/34100485/
It is the kind of thing that all the core dev could have worked from to get a solution - if they wanted to, but the discussion went elsewhere,

i will buy his coins for 10 USD each please  :D

Is that Greg Maxwell on reddit? I can't see any proof

what's his twitter link?
thanks

I do not think he is registered on twitter, because on each tweet he was never tagged :

https://twitter.com/thescottrob/status/539895264807378945
https://twitter.com/jgarzik/status/532497686008967168
https://twitter.com/petertoddbtc/status/570639422279921664

Or maybe I was not so lucky and I didn't find his official and real twitter profile. However nullc seems one of his nickname and he is using it on reddit :

http://www.reddit.com/user/nullc

@redsn0w thanks a lot

I really don't understand what Greg is saying.  He talks
a lot about problems in the reddist post... what does
he think is the solution?

You are welcome.



He is expressing his opinion and it can be wrong or also Gavin's proposal could be wrong (only time will show the truth).

so much fake information and misconception in these posts. 
confusion will lead to panic and that's never a good sign.

it's not about fixing a problem in bitcoin (which doesn't exist as tx with proper fee will always confirm) but changing it to a programming platform.

bitcoin is not broken and will not fail if left unchanged.  as each block gets full, we will be successful. fees will go up and then tiny transactions will not afford to use bitcoin and move to alts and sidechains. 

order will be restored.

do you want bitcoin to be a currency or a smart store of data for application developers?

my vote as a miner is not to have application xyz from gavin co stuffing the bitcoin blockchain full of non bitcoin related nonsense, which i have to mine for virtually no fee as i do my part to secure the blockchain.

I still don't get it.
So none of the devs know how to reach a final solution that's perpetual and doesn't require future forks before we meet the 1MB limit in 2016?

Well he did stay the he would sell most of his Bitcoin. The title might be a bit misleading though but this often happens. However people should be careful when making threads because they could be partially spreading FUD without realizing it.
I agree. It would be worse to see that the network has split up into two 50/50. Gavin has a lot of influence even though he sometimes is doing things the wrong way.

I'm more interested in the patches that XT has that allegedly decrease the security. I've already stated in a thread that the developers that are refusing the increase in the block size should propose solutions that are better and explain why. Even though Gavin is somewhat right he's doing things the wrong way. This feels like a hostile takeover attempt. Because they're rejecting his proposals he plans to go ahead with his own fork.
He will be successful if he gets Bitpay, large pools and such aboard as you've stated. However this is not how decentralization should work in regards to Bitcoin.

I'd like to hear what Andreas Antonopoulos has to say about the current situation.

100% true, he just want to put his words above others with this threats

No one would sell huge ammount of bitcoins since they change a lot daily around 20 up to 50 dollars above and down ...soo the interest to get them and sell some ,if i had 1000btc i would sell them i would sell a part and rebuy with the earnings lets say i sold 10btc for 250,i would use those 2500 to get more btc lets say around 12btc .. thats the moove ,money generate money and i dont believe btc will drop now the 200 dollars mark,looks this is the price worthing currently and btc mining is getting harder to get them,soo i may say bitcoin will explode like gold ,for me btc will get some result in 10 years a small jump then in lets say more 5 or 10 years.... it will be 500 dollars if not those 1000 dollars..... or over.

My biggest concern with the fork is all the infrastructures and businesses will have to take the huge risk of either moving to XT, or staying Core... it's insane. Imagine you are running a successful company like Bitpay, you say, okay 20MB, awesome, let's adopt XT for our transactions. Then, XT ends up crashing and Core is the one that survives. It's a headache.

What I see here is power play within the core dev group.

If this is current, https://bitcoin.org/en/development, there are 5 core devs and a lot of contributors. They are disagreeing and a couple of them threatens to leave the core team if the team do not follow their ways.

I mean no disrespect, but this is so childish. They should seriously sit down and talk this over. Compromise is the only way to keep bitcoin together, going forward. No one wants to see a split in the community, not the users and certainly not the exchanges and miners.

The Lightning Network is way too speculative, as you've pointed out. Gmax doesn't believe in the traffic jam scenario, or if he does he thinks we can just push through a small upgrade because the consensus will then be there. That's why buying time doesn't mean much to him. Perhaps you should figure out why he thinks that.

To me it depends on whether a fee market is working properly by then. If it is, there won't be a traffic jam, just some higher fees. If they get too high, I think even Gmax and the others would agree to a mild increase.

The more I follow this blocksize debate, the less I'm worried. There's a lot of exaggeration and rote extrapolation assumptions on all sides, but humans adapt. We worry about bad PR, but really, who cares? It's not like there is any other system that's going to supersede Bitcoin. If you want to do any of the really major things Bitcoin enables, you don't have a choice but to use Bitcoin (any altcoin is just going to be even easier to mess up).

Not that I want or expect bad PR, but we can't let that concern infect our planning and experimentation. As far as investment and adoption, the timing of the next cap increase is a short-term issue. I'd like to raise the limit and see it get limited economically so the devs could get on to something more important, but I also don't think anything would actually break if we stayed at 1MB even during the next bubble. Bitcoin is not a currency yet. It's an investment. It won't need tons of transaction throughput for a long time, and since there is no real fee market now there's no way it's using the blockspace efficiently yet. So I'm not worried, though if I had my way I'd prefer the "no cap" experiment, starting today ;D

This was a really strong comment. He has a very valid point, no need for him to nag everyone saying his solution is the best.

In due time, folks maybe will rethink in not supporting bigger blocks :)

I am not sure English is his (Muhammed's)  first language and perhaps he lacks understanding. Op also did quote a source which anyone can check for themselves.

The situation is indeed bleak. I am still unsure how this will all play out, but hopefully all involved can come to a resolution to this issue. Personal pride should be put aside or the greater good of the community.

Increasing the block size is the most simple change, lightning network and side chain just sounds too complicated to be easily maintained, raised level of complexity is the worst enemy for long term sustainability

You take it for granted that a change is needed now, but that's not true: https://medium.com/@allenpiscitello/there-is-no-crisis-20b58e14b09c

Decentralization is much more important than microtransactions, because the former is the foundation of value for Bitcoin.

Thanks for the link to that article, I shared it with a friend that need a dose of objectivity and not the normal reddit echo-chamber nonsense.

Even there were almost no micro transactions, the block size would still hit its limit during next bubble. And Satoshi said to phase in the change when the time comes, so it is not a complicated issue. Of course I think 4MB block size will be enough for quite some time

Some of the devs just so happen to own a company that will profit from not increasing the 1mb limit.  Conflict of interest, kinda makes it easy which side to choose.

Regardless if they have monetary interests or not, there are sound arguments to be against the 20MB fork, lots of them actually, just like there are sound arguments to be supportive of the 20MB fork. We cant reduce it to "they just wanna make money".

The blockstream and sidechains were once hauled as the next big thing in Bitcoin, promising to obsolesce every single altcoin and soar Bitcoin value to new heights! It seems it falls short of the megalomaniac view of Bitcoin relying everyone's cup of coffee, thus the "derp majority" of the Bitcoin community proceed to trow the majority of the core devs under the bus (supporting XT) before severing the network effect in two competing chains, soon(2016?) you'll learn the meaning of "the whole is more than the sum of its parts".

20MB will not centralise nodes and blocks.

I think his concerns is valid... with the fork Gavin is creating, he is creating a scenario where he has more say... The current situation gives him less say, because he has to share that position with a lot of other core developers.

We have spend years trying to sell a decentralized concept and now one or two core developers wants to sabotage this, with a fork to give themselves more control.

Is this really what we want? I think not.... there are a lot of people with the same concerns.  >:(

In this case Maxwell would go through with it since it would be a Centralized and not true Bitcoin according to his beliefs.
I think i'm leaning towards two systems in tandem both chains are absolutely not going to survive forever as one chain will outpace the other but at this point in the end adoption is the ultimate decider.


Upload and download caps are the goal of decentralized currency and it means nodes need a large geographic distribution.
I recall reading several threads on how 20MB would cause node issues in some locations due to speed requirements and non-sufficient bandwidth but I'm not well versed in that area of discussion myself.

Additional Info: I found a discussion related to the bandwidth implications I mentioned for those interested
http://www.ofnumbers.com/2015/02/06/what-is-the-blockchain-hard-fork-missile-crisis/

Agreed.  20MB blocks will add to centralization pressures, but I doubt to a meaningful extent.  And those pressures, however slight or strong they may be, will be slowly defused by exponential advances in CPU, storage, and bandwidth technologies.  After a few years, the network will have regained it's current equilibrium.

I dont understand how 20 MB leads to centralization pressure on the network ? If the fork happens and XT wins and remains under the control of Gavin & Hearn, i.e. centralization.

In my opinion this is the only real argument for bigger blocksize.
But the market will decide if it's really true.
Just wait, it'll solve out of itself.

I read the other devs are 'childish' and so on... the only one childish is Gavin with his 'my way or the highway'. Bitcoin looses a lot support because of this and XT will have even less support by the people.

Maxwell deserves some respect for his statement. Many in the community feel similar. I also sold a large chunk of my btc holdings because i won't be bullied around by this asshat 'Gavin'.
I won't be using his fork ever. It's going to die one death or another anyways. I don't see it survive longterm.

I think this whole drama is one epic mistake caused by Gavin alone.

Throwing is toys out of the pram to get his own way? thats how this comes across to me

Thank you for leaving Bitcoin Mircea Popescu!

I say.. bring it, he should dump all the BTC he has. Why not?

Because Greg has probably done 10x more for Bitcoin than everyone in this thread combined.

IMHO that's a mis-leading title. I can't gather anything from the reference that says he is currently threatening to sell his BTC and move on, just that if Bitcoin was to go down a bad route that he disliked he would then decide to sell his BTC and move on. He doesn't seem to currently be threatening to.

So why shouldnt he dump his coin to get a return on his investment? I dont really understand your argument.

Because bitcoin is not about investments.
It's about rainbows and unicorns.

In other words, bitcoin is centralizing because it is successful, driving more transactions. Blaming Gavin for that is ridiculous. The irony is that the anti-Gavin freakout club looks like a old school clique that wants to keep volumes low so a small number of early adopters can play with their coins without the smelly public barging in. If you want centralization, keep bitcoin small with a limited base of support.

Gavin's fork proposal in itself centralizes nothing. It remains the rule that the miners collectively decide what Bitcoin will be. And if it turns out to be a mistake we can go back or go to Plan C, whatever. But I'll be investing more in altcoins if the Status Quo folks start winning and we see fees start rising while confirmation times lag because they didn't want to fix anything.

Lose a bitcoin core developer, why not? /s

if he doesnt believe in the project anymore why would you want him?

He can if he wants, obviously.  But if he dumps all his coins, that's basically like
him giving up on Bitcoin, so the community would lose a very talented and dedicated
developer.   

I don't know what you refer to as the project. Bitcoin wasn't Gavin's project last time I checked.

I am personally concerned that this would matter to anyone. Before I continue, I want to point out that gmaxwell is a great asset to Bitcoin and the community. However I don't think it should matter that one person might stop working on Bitcoin as the open source and decentralized nature of Bitcoin means that it should not rely on any one person or any one small subset of people. If the community is concerned that any one person is going to stop work on Bitcoin then we have a bigger centralization problem then anyone realizes.

It is not uncommon for people to leave a large company in the middle of a project and the project most go on. It would be unusual for no team members on a project to not get some kind of a job offer while working on a long term project.

With all that being said, I do think his concerns should be somehow addressed. I don't know if this means making major changes to the proposed fork, making minor changes or making an argument to him that this will not cause further centralization. 

watch out, if you say the project you might confuse someone.

I was just using a project with a large company as an example. Bitcoin is not a project as it has no endpoint, at least hopefully it won't.

does a project have to have a specific endpoint to be defined as a project?

google says "an individual or collaborative enterprise that is carefully planned and designed to achieve a particular aim."

I'd say bitcoin is exactly that. Its ever evolving but fits that definition.

Also, how can one make the argument that it will be terrible if he leaves then make the argument that "its not his project", if its not one of his projects (a project is a collaborative effort) why should one care if he leaves? ELI5 because I obviously need it.

My understanding projects in the business world is that they have a defined beginning and a defined end point. A business system on the other hand is something that is ongoing.

A few examples of a project would be the building of a house, the design of a specific model year car or the rebranding of a company.

A few examples of a system would be selling widgets, producing cars or internal quality controls.

You could say that the design of the forked Bitcoin protocol would be a project (it would be finished once the changed protocol is accepted by the network) while Bitcoin itself would be closer to a system (ideally "Bitcoin" would never end).

People are concerned about his potential departure because of his large amounts of contributions he has made to Bitcoin over the years.

Core Devs are killing Bitcoin. Please somebody stop this.

Fuck him! Let him sell them all. We'll be better without him.

Everybody is selling their coins these days.

Awesome we have different definitions of a project. :)

i agree with you!

Wow, look at his github contributions before saying insults like that. Without him Bitcoin would be nowhere technically. I agree with Mr Maxwell, increasing the blocksize limit does nothing to fix the actual problem, it just prolongs it, as 20mb still can't scale to anywhere near VISA levels, and eventually that limit would have to be increased again and again(Which would be much harder and dangerous assuming that Bitcoin grows exponentially in the future, hardforking it would be a huge deal).

finally, someone is picking up what I was putting down. haha.

says the guy pumping an altcoin.

way to fallacy, one day youll have a real argument... it doesnt seem like that is today though.

We need him. However, Gregory Maxwell can quit if he wants. There are a lot of competent developers out there. His lack of hand-on experience in capacity planning for scalable systems makes me sick. We need more competent developers, not just him.

He should get rid of his beard too.

well we doesnt need developers that say to community i could sell all my btc bla bla well do it let who believe and really support bitcoin get them,and all days bitcoins changes hands soo we dont know how many bitcoins a single user has ..we see some wallets around 50000 bitcoins others have more others less well all waiting a raise to sell .

when any of u programmers prove u have any legimate skills to me besides Maxwell of course :)

one does not simply get rid of the beard. Now you have gone too far.

Agree.  It's not even grey so what's the point?  Being clean-shaven also might make cypherdoc like him.

well he has vision and some words may be wrong understood but on this point he said he could sell his bitcoins already without no one knows it yes that is why bitcoin is bitcoin you cant know who is the btc you getting  lol

He probably had a bad day. He's working a lot on BTC and he just announced all those cool blockstream features. Coding wizards are human too.
If he ends up selling he'll regret doing so so he knows better.

Hasn't he threatened this before? Or was this someone else? Whoever it was they said they had about 150 coins so it's not going to destroy life as we know it.

So basically this thread is full of "idea guys" who can't and never have written a line of code in their lives insulting one of the foremost technical developers/experts of Bitcoin. Oh yeah, and also wishing for his departure. Sorry boys, but ideas only get you so far. People with technical skill who know what they are talking about and can program are actually needed. This is a massive problem that has been persistent in the Bitcoin community for years now ("Someone else will build or implement it!" "Oh, he implemented it for us, but we disagree with his viewpoints, fuck him and everything he's ever done for us!" "Someone else will build it again!" On and on it goes...)

Egads, what a boggling thread. (I will not be sending a christmas card to the mean person that sent me this link! :) ).

Go read the context.  Someone was asking me (http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/37vg8y/is_the_blockstream_company_the_reason_why_4_core/crqbd78?context=1) why I'm not doing the some PR blitz to influence people's thinking.  My response was that I don't care to win people over, that if Bitcoin's survival depends on constantly making rescuing it with a political sales pitch and a mass market PR campaign then I think that would mean that its already a failure.  I don't actually believe it is a failure but I'm not frightened of it becoming one, though I'd think it would be a bit sad to have wasted many years chasing a windmill and for the world to lose this opportunity;  but that said, I can just leave if it goes the highly centralized route, and go work on something that still has a prospect of success-- there are just too many important things that need to be done.  I don't think there is anything "threatening" or anything about that.

I care a lot about defending, protecting, and nurturing the system, but not so much that I feel compelled to go around trying to reprogram people to get my way.  To even admit that doing so would be possible is an admission that the system cannot work.   So I'm happy to continue to just communicate frankly in the forums and means that I normally communicate in and see how the experiment pans out. :)

In my opinion, reddit has never been the center of highly critical thinking. Lately r/bitcoin seems to be a game of "follow the leader" - much like you mentioned it appears they only wish to reprogram folks to get their way. I also agree that insane and annoying sales pitches do more harm than good.

As a small time web dev, I have a little suggestion for you, who will be leading the QT chain. blockchain.info has already said that they are supporting XT chain (Ref: http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/37y8wm/list_of_bitcoin_services_that_supportoppose/). Many of the web application do not run their own bitcoind and rely on blockchain.info API. So, if there is no blockchain.info API alternative to supprt QT, many web application will eventually end up supporting the XT chain, even if they did not want to. So, running a blockchain.info API alternative might be something QT devs may think of...

Thanx for chiming in. Your response have been added in the OP.

Thanks Greg.  There's a tremendous amount of noise in the air.

I personally really appreciate everything you've done for Bitcoin.

Perhaps you can clarify the direction you'd like Bitcoin to go in concrete terms.
I read on coindesk that blockstream recently released some open source sidechain code.

Not to sound demanding, but the questions I would like to ask are as follows:

1. What do you see are the next steps to this being used widely?  And what would the timeframe be on that?
2. Is this one of THE key things we need, or are there others ingredients
required to scale Bitcoin?  If the latter, what would they be?
3. Is there any conflict of interest with blockstream as far as it being a for-profit company and doing what is in the best interests of Bitcoin?
4. Are you categorically against raising the block size as a stop gap measure to ensure capacity doesn't run out before other plans (sidechains etc) are implemented?

thanks, Jonald

well all persons has a bad day soo maybe this gregory had one as well too many pression ,i would like to be him these days communitty asking several in a short time.

Jon Matonis made an interesting video today on the block size matter. He basically says that if Hearn and Gavin are successful in their attempts to hard fork using Bitcoin XT and without core developer consenus, we're all screwed.

Strong opinions are presented in the following video. Viewer discretion is advised: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OwO5u6OVaaA

Thanks for sharing :)

Some users just tend to spin things using sensational titles. Some days, I just shake my head beacuse it's like reading The Daily Mail.

well as longs as they keep improvement bitcoin i dont mind at all some persons relax and spoke a bit about it ,there is a huge pression on these guys always seeking for the best to do

What a childish rant and a weird definition of failure.

How else did you think this world operates?

Did you think the masses will forever listen to whatever wisdom a few (more or less randomly) chosen ones will lay upon them? Follow you wherever you go unconditionally?
Just because you all are somehow special and irreplaceable and were sent to this Earth to rule Bitcoin forever?

And now you're holding a grudge because people are not blindly listening to you anymore, while you didn't even bother making an effort to talk to them in the first place?  ???

Jeez... The masses will abandon your elitist and cultish little circle at the drop of a hat and switch to whatever caters to their needs the most. Doesn't mean anything has failed...


So strange to hear these rants from grown-ups...

I think I found a perfect metaphor:

--

Imagine you're running a marathon and somebody passes you by.

Instead of running harder, you just drop to the ground and start crying:

"This is unfair! I will not be participating in this marathon anymore, because if it requires constant running then it's already a failure."

--

Do you see now how ridiculous your rant sounds?  

That is a very very wrong metaphor. It would be more like:

You prove via carbon dating that dinosaurs roamed the planet 65+ million of years ago.

Then someone comes and puts it in the mind of people that dinosaurs used to roam the planet together with humans 8000 years ago.

The mayority then decides to believe in the dino + human coexisting theory as it is to difficult for people to wrap their mind along a more complex scientific explanation.

Personally I would rather take a bullet than living in a world as described above.

And this world that is right now being forced down upon us is called XT and it is better because it is bigger....yeah....

Lets make this one particular thing very clear: maxwell's life, maxwell's rules.
He is under no obligation to work and research and donate his time and energy in this project as a compulsion. He can leave interest and drop from the project any time he wishes, no contracts. He wont sell his bitcoins just like how bitcoins won't get centralised. If they do, even i will sell em off.

...and then all the scientists quit, because, apparently, science has failed ::)

I feel exactly the same way about people arguing for a smaller network.  I don't know how people can even begin to think in such away unless they are greedy or selfish, or have spent too much time listening to people who are greedy and selfish.  Why would a majority of people support a network that only benefits a small minority?  If blocks become full on a regular basis, only the transactions with the highest fees will be processed in a reasonable time.  Unless you want Bitcoin to become an elitist niche for the wealthy, Bitcoin has to accommodate more users.  

Some claim the 1MB blocksize isn't a problem because people can go off-chain and trust a third party with their money, but that defeats the whole point of using crypto.  Why would someone settle for a second tier, centralised service that introduces risk, when they could simply use another coin that doesn't have an arbitrary 1MB cap?  If a majority of users start to go elsewhere, miners will likely follow.  If you artificially limit the number of transactions you can process, you are in turn also artificially limiting the mining revenue you could be collecting to incentivise securing the network.  There is no gain whatsoever in artificially limiting our target audience.

People won't support a network that doesn't support them.

This is why science isn't a democracy. It's why they teach creationism in some science classes and many deny global climate change.

Defines failure then says he doesn't believe his definition of failure. I chuckled a little.

well all days we  see several people complaint because too many pression on them to do what they got paid to do soo before say get out think we are asking them to keep improve bitcoin ,there isnt a limit on it.

why xt? because science. lol wtf

Science, how does it work?