Bitcoin Forum

I've sent this email to the Bitcoin Foundation 2 weeks ago.  For me it is clear they need to state their intensions.
The fact that they didn't reply, is not a good sign.  Worst case we should start our own counter-foundation.  Noone can claim bitcoin anyway.
We will be the Bitcoin User Group. Email me if you want to help found it, and agree with the original bitcoin principles: contact@bitcoinusergroup.com

We will stand for:

- Respecting the 21 million limit
- Decentralisation, no intervention of any kind
- Not changing the crypto (we keep SHA256)

-> Basically protecting the libertarian and anarcho-capitalistic principles, and not allow for any government intervention in the protocol.

Hi Lindsay,

Before I donate, I would like to know the foundation's stance on bitcoin:

Do you commit to never increasing the limit beyond 21 million coins?
Also, do you commit to never accepting changes that will include payments to be approved by government before being transacted?

In other words, are you ready and willing to protect the core essences of bitcoin, including its libertarian aspects as Satoshi intended?

Thanks for your reply.  It would also help if you could put your key intentions on your site if they are correct.

Regards

Weird idea ya got there. Your emailing the secretary will not get a reply. You need to ask (or become) a member to get items on the agenda. I would not support wasting time on the obvious and will not suggest it as an agenda item...your concerns are unrealistic. I don't want to set a precedent of having to reply to every wild accusation to appease people who aren't even paying to advance Bitcoin.

So I have to pay to get a reply?  Also, I don't like your tone.  You already sound like a government agent.

'Sorry, you mailed the wrong address, you should have known!'
'Since you behaved not according to our standards, I will not put your item on the agenda, you are wasting time'
'You aren't contributing to the system, so you have no right to reply'

It was actually my intention to donate, but you probably read over that part.  Before I donate somewhere, I want to know what their principles are.
And trust me, I was about to donate a fairly large amount.

Thanks for confirming my suspicions.

Edit: Oh yeah, like a real politician, you actually avoided answering my questions.

bitcoin is some kind of "majority" system. also, the goals of the bitcoin foundation are based on some kind of "majority" system. why should the entire group fix their behaviour of the next decades just to get some coins from you? why are you of such an importance?

… and that's without even really reading your "demands".

please don't join the foundation.

Let me be direct: your concerns amount to hysterics. Nobody on the foundation wants to (or could) change the rules of Bitcoin.

I'm not interested in having hysterics in a foundation that tries to get real work (the kind of work worth paying for) accomplished. Please start your own foundation to pay for stuff. I suggest you use a name that sounds less like Foundation and more like "club" or "well-wishers." This way you'll find it easier to keep the feeble minded from thinking you are evil. Oh, don't charge more than $30 entrance fee and update your btc based fee each week if necessary to keep the fiat cost low (instead of once chabging it once a year...or forget using that whole Bitcoin thing for actually receiving payments, it's too unstable to be useful...please note this is sarcasm).

Lindsay is busy with the conference stuff now, you might try her on the bitcoin2013 contact e-mail address.

@ anarchy: The decisional power in Bitcoin is hold by the miners. Things like changing the coins generation algorithm, transactions system, etc.
If you own majority of computing power, you can start changing the rules and hope minority participants (miners + simple clients) will accept the changes. This was Satoshi's vision.
The Bitcoin Foundation is unrelated to this basic mechanism.

Bitcoin Foundation is a not a place to implement your anarchist/liberal/socialist/libertarian politics.


Sincerely,

A Bitcoin Foundation member.

There's nothing stopping you from starting your own Bitcoin organization that advocates whatever you want to.

The foundation has never even mentioned anything about changing the 21 million limit, and it would devalue the massive holding they have anyway. Why would they want to do that. Remember many foundation members were mining minimum 100 Bitcoins a day non-stop.

What has been suggested about making Bitcoin not decentralized? I would like to know.

The crypto MUST be changed in the event SHA256 is compromised. However this is unlikely to become a concern for many lifetimes.

Who is "We"? Did you mean "I"?

I regard myself a "Bitcoin User", may I therefore kindly ask you to call your private interest group something else than "Bitcoin User Group"? TIA.

You sound like an angsty teenager.

Pretty sure that you're not supposed to actually express political opinions as a non-profit. Also, Bitcoin is not designed with anarchy in mind....please do some reading before you proclaim your political viewpoints to the world :)

If there can never be more minted Bitcoins than 21 Million, then surely they will keep on increasing in value due to the fact that a certain number are constantly being lost to hard drive crashes and people sending to addresses that are no longer active?  ???

So if someone has any of these political stances, or you think a person has any of those political stances means that said individual has no place in the Bitcoin Foundation ? And why sign such a message as a Bitcoin Foundation member. Do you consider your own view above that of another free man ?

Wow the arrogance/anger in all these replies is staggering.  I wonder why?  Isn't it a simple question to ask, if the foundation will protect the core essence of bitcoin?

I prefer that the bitcoin foundation be as non-political as possible, except whatever is needed to protect bitcoin.

Not changing the cryptography algorithm is stupid. Eventually SHA256 will be broken and we will HAVE to adopt a new algo. That is actually one of the strengths of bitcoin as I understand it - you can use a new algo to keep up with changing times.

i think the bitcoin foundation does need to have some fundamental principles lined out that will never change no matter what "agenda's" get voted in or out.

after all if there is only a couple dozen members then it will only take a group of craze minded saboteurs to pay a members fee and then over cast the votes in their favour.

imagine 50 bankers or public-servants buying the memberships purely to control the voting results. to get "agenda's" passed through and then persuade the community to change to the updated clients containing these voted changes.

so this is why i think the OP asked the question..

before donating to become a member, what intentions/fundamental principles does the foundation hold.

EDIT:

i like how this post just earned me to be ignored by 2 of the foundation members. As if them no longer seeing the message makes the points of the message less valid.

LOOOL! i really don't understand bitcoin! THEY CAN'T FUCKING CHANGE IT UNLESS PEOPLE AGREES WITH THEM.

and also bitcoin is not bound by the "libertarian aspects as Satoshi intended".

Yes. Duh. Next.

+1.

In addition, Satoshi was not decidedly "libertarian". He cared for his currency above any political ideology, which is very admirable. Few people I know would make something groundbreaking and not attempt to use it to fuel their own beliefs.

i r satoshi!

It's the only political leaning he ever really mentioned.

   

As a pundit who's been following the movement a long time, I think you need to use some introspection and ask if you yourself indeed fully grok the "core essence of bitcoin" as you put it.  As with most things it's best to study an engineering problem or solution with an open mind and leave your personal beliefs on the side.  In your defense, I think some of the guys have been a bit rude towards you, but in the end I think perhaps you aren't seeing the whole picture in some of your assumptions.

Tip of the day:  The degree of truth contained in a proposition is inversely proportional to the amount of effort one must expend to support the proposition.

Corollary:  The louder you yell, the less likely what your saying is true.  Truth needs nobody to intellectually defend it, you only must seek to understand it.

Set.FortuneCookieMode = false  :)

I'll become a donator, so I also get the right to behave like an asshole.. see you soon :)

You already have that right and seem to be exercising it well my man.  :)
^--  Not a flame - meant in good humor.

I think there's nothing wrong with the questions the OP asked. Although it's not certain that the foundation would be able to ease him completely, they should be able to thank him for the interest in their foundation, and also to give answers to his questions, and if they cannot fullfill his every wishes, they should briefly explain their stance anyway.

I also note that the OP did in fact state that he wanted to donate. As a donator, if one really cares about the stuff one donates to, asking questions is quite legitimate. Unwillingness or silence in regards to questions asked in such a situation, will not help in easing the worries that OP do have.

Although not everyone will think that OP should ask these questions, or if they disagree with the thigns he ask about, the very least one could do is to treat OP with respect and don't attack him. He obviously is a bitcoin-supporter, and as such should be treated like an asset, and not like some random internet idiot.

Anyways, that's what you get on internet forums - there's always opinion pointing every which way and different opinions, and not everybody is that helpful or positive.

Instead of attacking each other for having different viewpoints, we should work together for the benefit of bitcoin. If one disagree with someone, then pointing out the disagreement is not a problem, however doing unjust attacks is a problem.

Thanks, fully agree.  Also, in retrospect, the guy acting as the foundation is just a member.. I don't think he should behave like he has any authority in it.
He's not representative at all.

The first two points are great and I am pretty sure the vast majority of bitcoiners are for those points.
The third point I don't agree with. I don't want to change the crypto now ( for example to hurt ASIC miners) but changing the crypto SHOULD be an option in the future.  Most probably in more then five years after SHA3 is field tested for a few years or if some problem was found with sha256.

Yes, changing the crypto might be necessary in the future. Perhaps there are flaws with the current implementation, or stronger crypto is needed. However, the OP may not necessarily be an expect on crypto, and thus asks the question to the best of his abilities. The right person on the Foundation with the sufficient technical knowhow should be able to point out the same as I just pointed out. We can't expect everyone to know everything, and conditions will change in the future.

I agree on SHA256 being changed when it becomes insecure, but not for purposes of preventing ASIC development (which would be interfering in the free market)

Yup, just a member...states so very clearly in my avatar. Sorry you missed it. But, I am a member that thinks asking certain questions that are intrinsically silly can be ill intentioned and do not deserve a reply. For example, a question like "I heard you enjoy doing {insert universally disdainful act}, is that true?"

I don't think that's worth a spot on the agenda.

Lindsay has yet to categorically deny that Bitcoins and Satoshi are under direct alien control.  Why is that?

+1000.

But that's not the official response from the foundation of which I am a member.

Remember, not every bitcoin foundation member is an anarchist or a libertarian. Asking the bitcoin foundation to support anarchist ideal is like asking the American heart association to support anarchism.

Not every question is honest and genuine: Is it true that you've stopped hitting your wife?

Since The Foundation was made to further the interests of Bitcoin, then surely letting a governmental agency marry them is not the intention, right ? The quite opposite may not be true either, but I don't see the problem of asking questions.

If I wanted to put a large amount of money in a processing plant for microprocessors, I might be concerned with the environmental aspect, ie. handling resources in a way that would benefit the environment, but not necessarily give the best possible benefit on the bottom line. Some stock holders might laugh at me and say I'm a complete idiot for asking such questions, but my concerns are in fact legitimate and important for me. Because I genuinely care about the environment, so if the processing plant was unable to give me good answers and ease my worries in regards to this, I would simply not invest. At the same time, if I already had invested, I would be free to voice any opinion that I might had in regards to environmental issues with the company directly, and as an investor, they'd had to listen to me.

I can't at all see how the questions of the OP was 'silly'. He has his views, and he doesn't want to put his money in the pocket of someone not sharing his views, simple as that. I don't see how anyone has any problem with that. As it's said, there are no silly questions, only silly answers, also who's to randomly decide what are silly questions or not, I guess the definition of that would vary a lot. Heck, if I wanted to be difficult, I could say that all questions on this forum are silly, as probably 80% of the questions asked could probably be solved if someone just bothered to google for an hour and read various information posted online..

There's no point in alienating or picking on people who you feel superior too, if you don't want to get involved, then simply don't answer them.

This shit has been gone over and over and over on the forums.  Atlas used to pull this same crap.  He'd pop up under yet another sock puppet account and ask "questions" about the foundation.  I put questions in quotes because he damn well knew the answers from the previous dozen times he asked.

At this point, I feel pretty safe calling this entire thread a troll.  If I'm wrong about that, and the original post was from someone genuinely asking for information, then I apologize for calling him a troll, but I'll instead call him a moron (for reasons that I hope would be obvious once the troll option has been removed).

Why would you call me a moron for asking if the foundation will respect the 21 million limit, and not allow for government intervention in the blockchain?
I'd love to hear your reasoning behind that.  If that info would be shown on the website, or they would have replied to my email, asking them exactly that, maybe (but probably not).

As has been discussed in extensive detail in the thousands of other posts on this subject, the opinion of the foundation, to whatever extent that an organization can be said to have opinions, doesn't matter even a tiny little bit in regards to these two things.  The foundation has exactly the same amount of authority to make changes to the system that you have, none at all.

I'm really not kidding about the thousands of posts on this topic.  Did you intentionally avoid finding them (troll), or did you look, but fail (moron) ?

Everyone's angry due to the latest crash  ;D

IM NOT ANGRY, YOU USELESS PIECE OF SHIT!


i think OP is an idiot:
a) he is assuming that bitcoin is libertarian.
b) he does not understand bitcoin, and have only shown limited knowledge of cryptography.
c) he cry about it.

Yeah, the forum got a lot less friendly compared to 2 years ago.

indeed... noobs are annoying.