Bitcoin Forum

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=yVpbFMhOAwE#t=130s

The Bitcoin Foundation is trying to be like The Linux Foundation, who made this video. Gavin is trying to treat the protocol as a whole like Linux. He wants to be Torvalds. That works well for Linux but not for something that is money. Official Senior Developers and a Supreme Leader is not what Bitcoin needs if its going to supersede fiat currencies that easily ruin when force and authority is applied.

When authority is placed over money it becomes corrupt. Do you approve of the actions of Alan Greenspan and Ben Bernanke and what they did for the US Dollar? Do you think any person should have a say over your money as a supreme ruler?

Just watch until the end. That's what Gavin Andresen wants to be over Bitcoin, your Bitcoins.

Remember, there can only be one Bitcoin that people will accept widely. Do you want one that is yours? ...or one that is controlled by a select few?

The whole point of this currency is to escape the establishment. Let's not become a part of it.

I would really like TBF to start their own youtube channel and post high quality videos like this. Get on it Gavin!

You obviously lack basic undrstanding of how Bitcoin works.  The rules of bitcoin and the blockchain are set forever.  You can do minor restrictions, but that requires the support by a majority of all the miners out there voting by their hashrate.  The only supreme ruler of bitcoin is the blockchain, and the miners can support extra restrictions to the original set of rules if they want to.

The rules aren't permanent. The "official" dev team can make a release that changes the networks rules and most releases can be forced upon people if enough influence and clout is given.

QED.  There is no way to change the established rules of the blockchain without making a hard fork.  Absolutely no way.  You may, with the cooperation of the miners, introduce extra rules.  The new rules must be allowed by the existing rules.

What if I told you Satoshi changed the network rules without notification, once upon time? Nobody was the wiser. No fork required. He could of done whatever he wanted.

The fact is power will act as it wishes without accountability.

More restrictive rules can be malicious also. And Bitcoin Foundation being a self admitted self imposed spokesperson, policy setting, business vetting, intertwined with corporate interest body (http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=113400.msg1230272#msg1230272) with enough money spent on PR will always get it their way with enough miners. Maybe not today but definitely in the future.

The danger exists now that's my point.

Central representation of Bitcoin could be very useful and also a very bad move. If someone wants to found such an organ let them try, no one can prevent them. If they can put a "public face" on Bitcoin it would be a trust building thing. If they can't provide credibility or usefulness,  they won't get that status. Who would remember mp3's now without the JPEG group? If Bitcoin ever have to compete with another crypto currency and established interest group is very important.

I would know you were lying, and it is easy to verify by any client validating the blockchain.  Old rules can't be changed.  New rules may be added as long as they are allowed by existing rules.

"In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.

We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together."

Eisenhower's Farewell Address to the Nation

PS: Personally I believe TBF is a good thing for Bitcoin at this point and was inevitable. Would you rather somebody else create a foundation and call it like that? There is nothing in there that would prevent it!
To alleviate the concerns we probably need more of these foundations not less to keep thing decentralized.

You are pulling your conspiracy theories a few miles to far now, don't you think?  Why was the old model better, where a handful of unpaid, and to some degree unknown, developers had full control?  Better than a member organization?

I rather there be a handful of independent developers than a hegemony of industry funding solely dictating the course of development at the helm of one developer, indeed.

This is why:

i.e. J.P. Morgan, CIA and Governmental funding for this organization would be an issue.

This is getting interesting.  How would you go about to remove Gavin from his lead position in the old model?  You claim it was easy.  To me it seems easier now when I am a member of the foundation employing him.  I wonder how you would go about to revoke his Satioshi powers in the old model.

I don't think the community will stop watching.  A large part of the community has joined the foundation, and will watch it as well.

And all of them secretly funding the developers under the old model would not?

The old model would entail organizations going to each developer at the GitHub and having them work for them -- not easily done. Under the Bitcoin Foundation, there is more clout and changes can be pushed more easily just through Gavin.

If J.P. Morgan, CIA and governments around the world would like to support Bitcoin's open development, I would welcome it.  They could do it under the old model as well, but under the old model we wouldn't necessarily know about it.  Perhaps this is your problem?  You just don't want to know about it?

No. Not even close.

If you can't see the conflict of interest that comes from large social and financial powers funding Bitcoin, I don't think we can have a productive discussion.

They couldn't do it effectively under the old model because nothing would get done. There would be no foundation or authority for flawed releases coming from individual developers.

Look up Hegemony. Look how social movements and countries get taken over. We don't live in a nice, trustworthy world.

How? Fork git, discredit his.

It's all about credibility, it always was. Back then a lead dev was solely responsible for his, now he has a corporation shielding it for him.

Yeah you joined? And your going to vote him out? Is that why the political system works oh so well? Because elections are a good way to get rid of bad people? Please, I'm not 5 years old. You can't remove Gavin now. First of all he is on the board of directors for the next two years, to vote him off you will need to wait at least that long but secondly he is a founding member, and you can't get rid of one of those.


And this fallacy is exactly the reason why I preferred him being independent and constantly watched by the community. Now the community will trust that this Bitcoin foundation is being honest and open about who pays which bill where NOTHING prevents someone still paying a lead dev secretly to do whatever (not that I think this is relevant in the first place). So you see, this false sense of security under the pretense that it was actually needed is actually a moral hazard, the first of it's kind in the Bitcoin ecosystem and a huge danger down the road.

Atlas: did you forget to take your medication? you seem quite paranoid.

i also would have no problem with CIA, or anyone else funding bitcoin. in fact they can do it they want the code is opensource.
and you say that gavin might beginning to corrupt, i say that "might" be true, but i only want him replaced if he fucks up.

oh and btw. no one is forced to use the gavinnized version of bitcoin, just fork the code(it has been done before eg. the 0-fee fork).


you, atlas, are way too worried about a problem that does not exist.

You can do exactly the same under the new model.  Call your fork "Litecoin" or "Solidcoin" or whatver.
I don't think Bitcoin Foundation will corrupt Bitcoin more than Free Software Foundation corrupted free software.  The foundation is it's members, who are the community.
Yes, I joined.  No I wouldn't dream of voting Gavin out as long as he is the most qualified person for the job.
Do you consider yourself as part of the community?  If you do, this is obviously false.  If not, why do you waste your time trolling around here?

As long as Bitcoin stays open source and voluntary, I don't see a problem of anybody funding its development even if it's a CIA or JPMorgan. What we should fight for is to have an open market for alternative currencies.

Cryptocurrency is best served as a natural monopoly. Bitcoin will likely be the only popular cryptocurrency. It's not a like it or leave it type of thing. We do no not need it controlled by the government or the largest bank.

I didn't know the worlds largest bank was involved in this, I tried searching but didn't find anything.

Do you have proof that Deutsche Bank AG is trying to control Bitcoin? If you don't this is just another paranoid lie from you.

It doesn't have to be a monopoly.

If we look at gold, for example, one might argue that it was a natural monopoly on money, but I would argue that silver (even though less valuable) served as money as well.
And we already have "silver" to Bitcoin's "gold" - it's called Litecoin.

Once the "current" coin (Bitcoin at the moment) moves to a specialized mining hardware like ASICs the general purpose hardware becomes available for the next experiment (currently Litecoin). The same shift will likely happen again when Litecoin ASICs show up at some point in the future.

Litecoin brings faster blocks and as a result higher overall network throughput (due to 1Mb per block limit) before hard fork is required. It also will adopt important blockchain optimizatons earlier in its evolution and will likely have more equal coin distribution than Bitcoin due to increased community awareness when it was started. I'm sure there will be other successful coins as well.

Adoption wise, it would take one or two major payment processors like Bit-Pay to take any alt-coin on board to make all the difference.

I'm going to stick with Bitcoin and defend it until death for the interests of those who want a protocol that can't be easily changed. I am not going to Litecoins, Cosbycoins or Free Speech Zone Coins.

Thanks.

Or we can do the sensible thing and abandon the ridiculous and paralyzing idea of money altogether and actually help other people to live better.

That's the wrong attitude. If bitcoin is to suceed it needs more experimental cryptocurrencies taking the risks in order to continue innovation.

Recently a lot of very interesting ideas have come up which, if implemented fully, would either require a new currency or a hardfork of Bitcoin.  There is no way to stop the old blockchain from continuing, so we willl end up with at least two currencies if those ideas are implemented.  Do you think the ideas should be forbidden and buried?

Currently I see no reason to choose anything else than Bitcoin, but I'm not sure I can resist when something much better comes up.  E.g. something where the blockchain isn't needed.  Control is an issue here as well, of course.

I'll admit that I have been putting all of my income into Bitcoins for the past year or so.

So, yeah, I am biased. I am attached to Bitcoin.

All the more you should like altcoins, they are essential in testing new features which would be too risky to implement in bitcoin and where testnet isn't realistic enough.

I prefer to think of it this way:
Bitcoin is a multidimensional form of life and it intersects with our 3D reality in a variety of ways.
Intersections may appear to be separate objects in space and time but they really are just a part of a bigger more complex idea.

You can spend tiny fraction of your bitcoins to build an equal representation in any successful alt-chain.

So you have set your self up to get burned ?  :P

On other hand I do agree, we should try to get away from a situation where one group is slowly becoming the kingpin. I would love to see more options besides the default bitcoin daemon, not a alt currency but a alt deamon/library that implements the protocol as it is today. It would give the foundation some competition and the community a fall back in case a unwanted change does get pushed true in one or the other.

If you don't like the foundation then go find one of the people/groups that are working on that and support them ...

There was a time I thought stuff like that too.

I'm not sure what I was thinking it about, but damn, if those weren't the best cookies I've ever eaten. Never had such strong ones since.  :(

we just need to get gavin off the board. the others can stand as is but we cannot have the lead developer's hands wrapped up in politics.

Politics and hidden agenda's a sinister pair.

Even if an individual or group can be 100% sincere, the possibility for corruption shadowing any organized representation would always be a factor. (however unlikely it may be) the possibility will always exist.