Bitcoin Forum

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=176921.0

http://www.nypost.com/p/news/business/bitcoin_anarchy_in_need_of_some_zTFr06G6IWEWYp3OSvJ99L


“We’d be happy to be regulated,” said Vessenes, who also is with the Bitcoin Foundation, an organizing body. “There is no self-regulatory organization for these. It’s pre-regulated right now, but we’re not anti-regulation.”


Who is this guy, flying to Japan, negotiating MtGox into giving up their US and Canadian customer base, and then he goes straight into bed with the authorities, slowly pulling us with the legs into exact the same broken system we're intending to leave ?

It's time for the community to decide what we want. Bitcoin shall not be governed by the US.


Peter Vessenes, how dare he speak for Bitcoin, the decentralized network. If he's happy to be regulated, then he at least should discuss this with the community first. This is really disrespectful towards the community, and it is against the spirit of freedom and lack of regulation that is Bitcoin.


“We’d be happy to be regulated,” said Vessenes

^^ This is the worst thing that man has ever said, I had some hard questions for him earlier on, which he choose to never respond to

He hasn't even posted in this forum (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=621;sa=showPosts) since March 19. And ignored a hell of a lot of questions asked to him.

What kind of shady deals are going on in the background here ? Also MtGox is discontinuing USD redeemable codes, or else they would face consequences. Consquences by who, and who delivered the message. I don't like this development at all.

Let us see what the community thinks.

You need to realize that there is some distance between regulation of fiat->BTC and vice versa and regulation of bitcoin itself. He is referring entirely to the former, not the latter. You would be silly to not want regulation of the exchanges and such, it is the only real way to bring legitimacy.

Exchanges need to pay attention to the laws in their jurisdictions, or else they would be unable to operate. But how I interpreted this was that they would actually want to regulate how trade is done on the exchanges, which I don't think is a good idea.

I disagree with the claim it's the worst thing he ever said, or that this is even bad.  It sounds like he is doing his job.  Those who find fault with him making a statement like that have a limited view of the way business and politics works.

This is pretty vague. Is there something in particular you have a problem with?

I'm of the opinion that no business interests should be on the foundation's board, especially the guys that run gox and bitinstant.

I'm a lifetime member and I won't have anything to do with the foundation until and unless Karpeles, Shrem and Vessenes are gone.

Yes, if there's an man that's supposed to have the leading role of two enterprises, one or both of these roles can not be fulfilled completely. In my view, if you're the chief of a company, then holding the lead role in a foundation means you can't do a great job at both of them. That is a big problem.

It's the overall impression, I don't trust that guy to want the best for bitcoin. I might be wrong, but that's the impression I've gotten. Look at his history, he's been at max 2 years with every company he's been running. The exchange rate has much volatility, I don't see how one should call for regulations because of that.

 I agree with this. Also, the steep fees needed to 'buy in' to the foundation means it's a rich business men club only. I think there's plenty of members in the community that could contribute equally or better that doesn't have millions of dollars on their bank accounts.

The bitcoin universe is still pretty dang small bro, you should be happy that there are people who are willing to spend time and effort to help you make money. If all the business guys resign from the foundation, who will step up to spearhead such things? Programmers? I don't think so.

Gox and Bitinstant are alienating many new users. They shouldn't be associated with the foundation.

If you look at the FSF, Richard Stallman is super dedicated to his cause, to the extent that he for a while slept under his desk when not programming  or doing work for the FSF. He travels all over the world and talks about Free Software. He's not a business person, but he sure has made a name for himself and most geeks now about the FSF, and appreciate what they do. Stallmann is genuine and believes in what he does.

The same kind of person we would need for the Bitcoin Foundation, not a person that's only interested in business. Bitcoin is still small, but not smaller than that any bitcoin business of a certain size can warrant having at least one person working full time at that project. To my understand, for example blockchain.info has one person working full time on it. In a foundation, I'm sure an Executive Director would have his hands full every day if he so choose. Having a demanding full time job outside the Foundation means he is not able to do a great job for the Foundation.

NO. PLEASE! HELL! NO! Those guys who fu**ed up the regular markets and never come up with innovations and improvements for citizen should stay home.

Perhaps when he says "we", he means CoinLab. CoinLab might want regulators to come in because regulations give established companies an economic advantage. Too-big-to-fail is the epitome of regulation.

From the NY article:

So, I take it the problem is the volatile market rate. As bitcoin grows, it will become more stable, it's currently growing pains. What exactly would people 'who understands markets' do in regards to the bitcoin market?

Yeah well bitcoin's Stallman decided he wasn't up to the task, so again I ask, who do you think is going to do this? You can't just will a Richard Stallman to exist to help bitcoin.

Someone else gave an interview a few years ago (Gavin maybe) who said that any regulation should be at the exchange level.

They regulate everything that has to do with their dollars anyway, this is not a huge leap.

How's that working out, Peter? Your flagship has sprung a leak.

Who ? I'm not sure, perhaps there would be some people interested if the position was made available. A Bitcoin-Stallman would not be bad.  ;D

I am not sure if having the foundation run by the biggest bitcoin business men is the best idea. Perhaps the Foundation should be more independent ?

I hate regulations but I believe bitcoin would be more stable if somebody could regulate it

What do you mean by more stable, and how would it be regulated. Do you mean that for example the US Govt should start the printing press, and inject dollars in the exchanges, and run bots to keep the exchange rate stable ?

Don't you think the exchange rate will become stable when the market cap grows and become bigger ?

Bitcoin barely has its wings yet and its so-called proponents are already calling for regulation. I never trust a man that brown noses the government in order to further his own interests in a new technology.



I'd like to see more coders and fewer business interests on the board.

well, i'm looking at this from merchant point of view. I need stable rate so I dont have to worry about selling coins every hour. As long as soft  regulates coins it will always be what it is today. It will never go mainstream  the way it is now. I'm not sure how it needs to be regulated but I think it needs human input just like US gov does to market

Bitpay allows people to pay with bitcoins and you can either keep it in bitcoins or get the dollar rate at that time. Why would you have to worry about the rate?

Use Bitpay when it's unstable. They exist to minimize exposure to volatility. It's part of their business plan, as I understand it.

market cap doesn mean anything. Rate will be stable when people trust bitcoin. But who's gonna trust some buggy soft?

bitpay wants 3% to transfer btc to usd. I pay 2.75% for credit cards. Plus, if btc dropping you're not getting full amount with bitpay. Think about this: you made purchase for btc. If btc dropping fast by the time transaction is confirmed I can loose most of my profit

Did you find something that Dan Kaminsky missed?

You should talk to the people that run the biggest exchange in Bitcoin about the price and their relation to its recent fall.

0.99%
That's the exact opposite of what happens.

bitpay charges 0.99% to put btc to your account and 3% to convert it to  usd

thats exactly my point: as long as mtgox not regulated they can do whatever they want.

You should probably stick to fiat then. It doesn't sound like Bitcoin is for you.

gox needs to be regulated by the existence of other exchanges. Government regulation works in favor of the government, not Bitcoin.

Better check your sources again.

While you're at it, read up on what actually happens with the currency conversion rates.

other exchanges exist but does it help?

We're still early in the game. There are other exchanges being developed and coming online. At some point, one of them will be an improvement over what we have now.

I tend to trust in the market over the government to solve problems. I'm one of those "market anarchistics" that Peter derides. He appears to trust government over markets, perhaps because he wants government to protect his position.

How do we know that's what he really believes?  I'm not doubting it, but when someone speaks in their official capacity in a manner consistent with that capacity, I don't automatically equate it with being their true-to-heart personal opinion, especially when that capacity happens to be that of a lawyer, somebody purposefully trained to articulate a position with which they don't necessarily agree personally.  The notion that he "derides" somebody is really indeterminable from a statement like this, and so is any assessment as to what trust he places in governments.

Bitcoin needs more legal talent looking out for it, not less.

This is absolutely wrong.

I have been using bitpay for the last few weeks and never paid more then the promised .99% fee (even when converting to USD). I have processed about $530 in USD transactions and paid $5.24 in fee's total.

https://bitpay.com/pricing

This is scorn and derision, from a professional or a personal view:


This is the position of someone that trusts government, otherwise known as force and fraud, over markets. Markets are cooperative and competitive, things that government isn't and Bitcoin is.

This is the line with Bitcoin: do we trust the old model of force or the model that Bitcoin now makes possible?

Let me know how long you're standing around waiting.


I have followed the foundation *very little*, but I do recall that mtgox was the first or one of the first "top tier" donators for like 10kbtc yearly? Do you think a sane business would expect nothing in return? The political will of bitcoin has started and the major players are going to be the people who have lots of bitcoins. This is what you guys wanted, right?

I'd nominate casascius to the board.  ;)

If you're a merchant that sells something for bitcoin, and you're dependant on getting the USD eqivalent, then you can use an automated solution that converts for you instantly. In cases of extreme volatility in the markets, buying could temporarily be stopped. This does not happen often.

And if you wanted the exchange rate to be more stable at this point in time, how do you propose it be done ?


Agreed, and in that light, this entire thread is based on exactly what I personally frown upon, polarizing on incomplete information, but anyways, it seems like there can be some discussion from it. I'm sure Vessenes have thick enough skin to survive my post. ;) Also, it's not like a forum post is going to change anything anyway. :)


Got your point, somebody has to have the role of Executive Director. Sure, no matter if the people running the show weren't business owners, they would still have to listen to the viewpoing of any entity funding them, that's about how the political system works I would think. :)

As for what we guys wanted? Personally I never had any say in regards to the Foundation, if I supported it or opposed it, it would have no effect either way.


I would too. He seems to be one of the smartest and most reasonable persons around this forum. :)

I was speaking on a scale bigger than just the foundation. Bitcoin isn't just about making some people wealthy for the greater good, those wealthy people are also going to be in positions of power and will shape the future of the currency. Perhaps, THE WORLD! For better or worse, the players are already pretty well-set. Ergo you will continue to have no say. But I'm just a raving bitcoin hater.

Then maybe Peter shouldn't run around polarizing people with inflammatory invective. ;)



casascius has also done more for Bitcoin than the current executive director, imo.

Good point, I never heard of Vessenes before he became the Executive Director. Casascius I have great respect for though.

What power does the BCF have that prevents everyone from just ignoring it?

I quess the bigger picture in what you say is that the bitcoin foundation as organization wants to see bitcoin regulated.

There are also other persons from that direction seem to talk fondly about regulation and I have heard nobody from there to talk passionately against it so I think it is a pretty good guess to assume Vessenes actually means what he says and what he says is pro-regulation. Not that it matters that much as it is more important that the bitcoin foundation wants regulation.

Don't make the mistake of analyzing the effect of regulation just taking the current letter of the law but you should look out for the spirit of the law and more importantly the spirit of the lawmakers. The letter of the law is subject to change and the direction of change can be guessed by thinking about what is the spirit of the lawmakers.

What is the spirit of the lawmakers? Are they happy to have AML regulations enforced only at the exchanges or would they want to track all bitcoin movements? Would the taxman also want to know everything and tax everything? Would some FBI or CIA want to track all money movements? Yes. That is what they are going to go after and having a lot of bitcoin-businesses on US soil and bitcoin foundation aboard on this effort is making things much easier for them.

People sell out. Welcome to reality. Why do you think communism and anarchy are great ideas on paper but never work. Greed! If you look at bitcoin as a social experiment you can learn alot about humanity.

The OP is misleading as it stands.  I knew the name but had to check it out.  Please make it clearer in the OP that the organisation Vessenes is referring to is Coinlab.  If that is his organisation then who are we to be outraged?  He can do as he pleases with it and can negotiate as he pleases with mtgox.  You don't like it go elsewhere.

It would be useful to know his position with regards regulation of the Bitcoin Foundation or regulation of Bitcoin in general but if the acceptance of regulation on Bitcoin exchanges in the US is inevitable then his business is likely to get much more co-operation and less of a headache from the regulating authority if he publicly shows willing rather than appearing to be dragged screaming and kicking to regulation for the sake of his libertarian audience.

Of course the Randians among us will be calling anyone who doesn't stand up and do a Hank Rearden a traitor to 'the cause'.  I find the irony quite amusing really that that element of this community would rather see those Bitcoin-related business pioneers sacrifice themselves to fight their libertarian cause than accept the realities of operating within the legal framework of whatever jurisdiction they happen to be in.  On the other hand all that is required of customers who are not happy with latest developments is that they withdraw their custom.

If what people are unhappy about is that ID details given to mtgox is handed over to the US authorities I would have thought it a little naive to think those details were going to stay locked up in mtgox records and never looked at by any authorities - and if it's one authority it's all of them!  I wonder what the small print of the mtgox ID process is?  I've not looked because I never did the whole caboodle with them.

It is another matter whether someone who (maybe for practical reasons) in public statements proclaims to be in favour of regulation for his own business would like to see (or would easily capitulate to) regulation of the Foundation .  So I don't see a problem with the poll question providing the issues that appear in the OP to have been conflated by the outrage are separated out and dealt with accordingly.

As Vessenes runs Coinlab I don't expect him to do anything that would hurt his business. And of course you're right. Govt's would like to have control of everything. But can they ?

Established business people tend to like regulations a lot, indeed. They keep competition at bay, by creating a huge barrier of entry to new market participants. By pressing for tough and strict regulations, Vessenes assures that few people will manage to create new startups to compete with him (like that bitfloor guy for ex., would his exchange exist if regulation enforcement was strict when he started?)

Regardless of whether he meant regulation for his competitors or regulation for Bitcoin in general, I don't find it sane to have a person that likes to use government force in the Bitcoin Foundation board. But who am I to say anything anyway, I'm not even a member of this club.

I very much enjoy the free-market spirit of "older" Bitcoin entrepreneurs like Erik Voorhees, Roger Ver, Charlie Shrem etc. I guess that as Bitcoin approaches mainstream, more "classic" entrepreneurs will start showing up. We'll have to deal with it.

Thank you OP for opening this topic and making me aware of this fact.

It was probably a bit hasty and silly of me to open such a poll on such a whim, given the lack of information regarding the case, but anyway it seems like it spured some decent discussion.

Code signing keys for the client issued by the  OS vendors (Microsoft and Apple) whose bootloaders are in turn recognized by the hardware vendors.  Just wait.

Speaking of which, it's too bad we don't have a project leader with the kind of balls Linus has (http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2013/02/linus-torvalds-i-will-not-change-linux-to-deep-throat-microsoft/).

I remember Gavin Andresen setting dollar bills on fire in an early interview. Apart from that, he's the epitome of political correctness. (Just waiting for Gavin to pop in with his two cents - as he has a magical ability to spot whenever his name is mentioned on the forum. ;))

I suppose you think Linus got appointed to the Linux Foundation for defacing a Windows XP CD, eh?

Governments cant regulate mathematics, which is the basis of bitcoin. Its like trying to regulate gravity.

I don't like when companies become involved with lobbying groups for their industries, its how cartels are created - its not free market at all.

However, we don't live in a free market, we live in a world where corporatism and lobbying governments is how you get things done.

You should never get your news from a newspaper, all that article was about was declaring that the BF was willing to talk, and had the support of the rest of the industry.  It was confirmation that they really did speak for the community and were willing to do what the government wanted to move bitcoin to the next level.

This is good old fashioned politics, and not somewhere where ideology has a home.

Real issues that rock the boat are best discussed behind closed doors, where there isn't an audit trail - but in public, everyone should have the same voice - that is how the game is played.

If you don't know the rules, you lose! ;)

So basically, at this point, BCF can be considered a lobbying organization operating for the benefit of Coinlab.

I don't want anything to do with that business, and still wonder why BCF can't simply be ignored.  What authority does it have to tell anyone to do anything?  If you don't like it, don't support it.

If BCF is considered somehow to represent Bitcoin itself, then there is a glaring conflict of interest in it being run by a principal of one specific business that is competing with every other Bitcoin business.

Sad but truth - bitcoin indeed is centralized system that pretends it wants to be decentralized.

1. The blockchain split incident. It required central authority to split the chain. It required central authority to cause the problem in the first place (which was formed by accumulating >50% hash power).

2. The client code is controlled by central authority. Does anyone check the source code and compile it by hand before using it? Even if someone does, 99% of userbase just installs whatever they get each time a new version is released. If that code is secretly controlled by some authority, they have all the power they need and you can't do anything about it.

They can't "regulate gravity" but they can pretty much forbid you to skydive for example.

We should not be so arrogant. Governments can be dangerous to Bitcoin.

Core ideas of BTC implementation should be carefully analysed. Regulation is a tricky word when it is used with lobbying. These people don't understand exactly what the revolution, innovation and math of course. If anything should be regulated on BTC markets, it is fiat itself. Remove it, problem solved almost instantly.

I've thought of creating a site that will constantly check the official downloads for any nefarious changes and report if anything is found, but at the moment I'm working on another project, so it would have to wait. But I think if there was anything nefarious going on, that it would be spotted by some devs ?

But true - what could we do if the official software was in fact changed containing something most people would not approve of. I hope it never comes to that..

My problem is not what this guy does with his own business.  If you're going to interface with U.S. banks, you're going to have to submit to some degree of regulation.  My concern is that this guy appears to be in some position to make decisions for the rest of the users, who may just want to stay away from banks in general.  Why should someone with this conflict of interest have any authority? 

As for the fork problem, people went along with that solution because it worked a lot more quickly than any other solution would have.

I certainly don't expect anyone running a Bitcoin business to sacrifice their livelihood for some bullshit idea of ideological purity.  However, I'm not sure someone running such a business should be telling anyone else what to do.

This is part of the problem. We don't.

And from what I have seen, I haven't been impressed.

We need someone more visible, articulate, and more of a leader.

He's already admitted he's open to someone else taking over the directorship of the foundation. That's not a good start.

What about the BitPay guy, still a bitcoin business person, but the presentations I've seen from him are of very high quality:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=160131.msg1702464#msg1702464

They pay the wages of the lead dev. Gavin Andresen, so in that sense they have some "power" I suppose.

But for the rest of us "market anarchist dilletantes", we are free to ignore Vesseness's pleas to subjugation.

I'm interested to see what Jon Matonis has to say, AFAIK he is still on the board of the BF, and has been stridently anti-regulation and damning of those who invite it in the past.

Maybe Vesseness is just running his yap off and speaking out of turn in an attempt to calm the troubled bitcoin waters, like some kind of messiah figure or something?

For the record: A dilettante is a person who enjoys the arts or someone who engages in a field as an amateur out of casual interest rather than as a profession.

Like a lawyer or business analyst who dabbles in cryptography .... but probably wants someone else to secure his bitcoins might be a good example I imagine?

Bitcoin is far more dangerous to the powers that be than they are to Bitcoin.

“Right now you have a bunch of anarchistic market dilettantes who don’t understand how markets work and don’t understand the perils of markets,” he said. “People who understand markets need to get involved.”

The most important is to understand the recent crash, is it purely based on psychology/market behavior or manipulated by some large players? I think the latter is more likely, since they start the DDOS at the same time as mass sell off

For a small exchange and such low market capital, it is very easy to manipulate

Bitcoin foundation should resign from Bitcoin.

No.  In popular speech, "dilettante" refers to someone who flits from field to field, never acquiring anything more than superficial knowledge of a given subject.  It's typically used pejoratively.  A "dilettante" originally referred to an admirer of the arts, but hasn't been used in that manner since the 18th century.

If you have any doubt as to how the word is used in today's world, google the phrase "he's a dilettante"  (with quotes) and see what comes up.

If there is some sort of internal regulation right in the Bitcoin protocol, or anything similar, I won't upgrade to the new protocol.  Bitcoin needs no regulation.  Bitcoin is the currency of Economic Freedom.

This.

There are other ways to pay Gavin.

Bitcoin does not need lobbying and marketing crap from the TBF. TBF only serves as a entrance gate for regulation and centralization.

Vessenes should fix his crappy exchange and otherwise STFU, 'cause he hasn't been elected to speak for the BTC community.

Galippi would be perfect.

Any structure of power can be dangerous, even bitcoin can be dangerous.
So this is far from a simple decision.

On the one hand we cannot trust individuals or organsisations to act in the best interest of everybody, on the other hand we have to fix that with overarching control structures which also can act in their own interest.
The trick is, i think, to decide in a democratic way what we expect of a thing like bitcoin and have that protected in some way.
For now, i'm not sure there is a consensus about what bitcoin is to society so it's going to be very difficult to even start thinking about how to regulate it in a non-destructive way.

This.

I suggest a sister poll: I can vote because I'm a Foundation member: y/n

Try flying a hot air balloon over the White House.  ;D

We don't need a Bitcoin Foundation. We need a Bitcoin PAC.

Early adopters used Bitcoin for the liberty it provides. Freedom from government oversight, bureaucracy, and often outright theft.

If the government has a problem with Bitcoin, it's the government that should change, and those who claim to speak for the community should be advocating as such.

I don't care what they regulate on the fiat end, but Bitcoin is ours.

That makes sense.  Personally, I didn't vote in the poll because I don't give a fuck.  I don't give a fuck about the Bitcoin Foundation, either.  I've managed to use BTC over a year without knowing or caring about the membership of this entity.  The only time it made a decision of importance that I noticed, it was actually a reasonably good decision (on the fork).  If they had come to a staggeringly idiotic decision, I think most of the miners would have just ignored it.

Anybody can regulate bitcoin but nobody should control it.
Buy bitcoins when they are cheap and sell them when they are expensive and they will be regulated.
The US government may also buy bitcoins  how much they wish and so they could regulate it. Of course other governments may trade also with it. Bitcoins are for all.
If with regulation is meant control over the blockchain then this is undesirable. Any other control over the bitcoin transactions or exchanges or mining pools is also undesirable.
I think he should explain more precisely what he was meaning with regulation.

Actually, you can read the #bitcoin-dev logs and see that the decision/suggestion to have miners go back to the 0.7.XX fork was actually made by luke-jr (and in some part sepa who backed his thinking). Gavin's first (and I think only call) was for "the longest chain wins" ... i.e. at that point that would have meant remaining on 0.8 fork and the chaos that would have ensued.

tl;dr : Luke-jr (and some part sepa) made the call for the network to return to 0.7.xx fork, not Gavin or the BF.

So, basically, the idea was adopted simply because it was good, and not because of some imputed authority of its proponent?

That's actually a good thing.

I think the concept of this thread may be mistaken.  The question isn't really whether some guy should resign from some foundation, but whether we should even be making decisions based on the opinion of some foundation.  Really, who cares what BCF thinks?  Am I the only person practically unaware of the activities of this entity?

Agreed - while this might've been not the best thread ever created on this forum, it has spured some interesting conversation that I personally have found interesting.

In any case, you would need to make a pretty strong statement of disassociation with BCF to give it any meaning.
The world will see 'Bitcoin Foundation' and think its the singular incarnation of bitcoin.
They have automatically won if there are no voices against it.

Could you elaborate on this please ?

Bitcoin Foundation has an official ring to it. People will give this organisation authority purely because of its name.
If your goal is to show that this organisation is not representative then you have to communicate it well enough because you're fighting an image.

The bitcoin.org domain name is thankfully not controlled by the Bitcoin Foundation. It's controlled by Sirius, who was given this control by Satoshi. So if a version of Bitcoin released on bitcoin.org does anything funny, Sirius can take it down. If Sirius does anything funny, the release won't be properly signed, and the Bitcoin developers could also issue a network alert. I think that this is a very nice arrangement. (And it was set up this way by Satoshi, so it must be good!) Though Gavin has said that he would like the domain name to be under the Bitcoin Foundation's control, which is something I definitely wouldn't support.

I don't think that the Bitcoin Foundation does much harm if it doesn't get too much power. It might be useful for it to hold any Bitcoin trademarks and patents in jurisdictions where it's not safely possible for no one to hold such things. It's good that Gavin is getting paid. I haven't been too impressed by their other activities, though they haven't done much harm IMO.

" Should Peter Vessenes resign as the Executive Director for Bitcoin Foundation ?"

Perhaps you should give it it's proper name. The Bitcoin Foundation has been voluntarily dissolved according to .gov records and the new entity is called "THE BITCOIN FOUNDATION, INC. DBA THE BITCOIN FOUNDATION"

Is it safe to say that the USD is the world's currency?  Governments will need to regulate the USD side of the Bitcoin imo...thoughts?


Thx

Having control spread out a little, only makes sens if you ask me.



I have absolutely no knowledge about this, in general I know nothing about legal company/organization structures in the US. I obv. don't live in the US.

If you have any supporting info regarding bitcoinfoundation's pointlessness, and how it's counter-productivity to bitcoin's ideals, please email it to info@bitcoinfoundationisanoligarchy.org

Well, I'll be damned.

http://www.bizapedia.com/wa/THE-BITCOIN-FOUNDATION-INC-DBA-THE-BITCOIN-FOUNDATION.html

They'll probably do a great job and all, but non-profit ?

There's at least 3 major business owners in the board of important people there.

There are some rather, quite disturbing in my opinion, facts about the foundation that have never been mentioned on this forum, indeed anywhere on the web, unless perhaps on a members only site.

Could you please elaborate on what's disturbing ?

When I saw and read this thread I thought the same as your last post - "They'll probably do a great job and all, but non-profit ?

There's at least 3 major business owners in the board of important people there." -

So I did some searching and what I found prompted me to join the forum to comment, I will PM you shortly Herodes.

Why don't you tell us all?

Please just disband the Bitcoin foundation and stop trying to form organisations that claim to represent people when they actually don't, I'm getting sick of this, it's exactly how groups like the Federal Reserve got started and will also be why I diversify into alternative currencies, I will never acknowledge the 'Bitcoin foundation' as any sort of regulatory or representative body of Bitcoin or it's users and do everything to fight against them.

The Bitcoin Foundation Inc. constitutes a serious risk to Bitcoin's independence that should not be taken lightly.

What they seek is Bitcoin's approval by the establishment by adjusting it to their requirements, which is a severly misguided aim.

The fact that they wish to take control of bitcoin.org raises a huge red flag.

What they exhibit first and foremost is constant usurpation for (more) power. They do not act in the interest of the majority of Bitcoin users - they act as they see fit.

I am not one to accuse before I am sure of my facts, Herodes is a long standing member and may be able to confirm some things for me and because he started this thread I don't think he will try to deflect my questioning of the foundation.

When I have collated and verified all my info I will post it here.

It's the first I've heard of it and I'm a lifetime member. Granted, I don't frequent the foundation's forums, so perhaps I'm just out of the loop.

If an email was sent out about this to foundation members, I missed it.

Well you guys can complain about it or you can help me design and implement my course. The better it becomes; the more people take it and recommend it. If it becomes the entry point into the bitcoin world for the general public, then those who control the course; control the opinions and level of participation for all who learned from it. I want the veterans in this community to step up or you will have to just accept the bitcoin foundation as your defacto leader. The media will give them this title soon enough.

Maybe I'm paranoid, but I don't trust a "foundation" for bitcoin one ounce. I feel it somewhat goes against the principles bitcoin was founded on.

Here here. Join my class

+1 to everyone recognizing that the purpose of a government-sanctioned Bitcoin "foundation" is to centralize and control and sell-out.

You aren't reading my post, I don't give a shit about self-appointed community leaders and organisations, you can want things all you want, doesn't mean you'll get them.

Usually it means you're using the foundation as a means to promote your business and lock out competition. The first job generally pays a lot better than the second.

They are the Bitcoin Foundation. Unfortunately that means any regulation of Bitcoin which they approve of will be seen as having been done with the support of and after consultation with the Bitcoin community. If a few people pipe up with complaints afterwards then they are just the ranting libertarian/anarchist fringe that the Bitcoin community has "outgrown".

Jon, another great article.

The issue is really quite simple, just don't vote for Peter Vessenes on the next election pursuant to the by-laws of the foundation. If members are really upset they can vote to impeach him.  ;D

What election? have you seen election in corporation ?BITCOIN INC

My comment on this topic was initially meant more as a joke. However, as I researched the "foundation" it became clear that things are not quite what they appear to be. Other Bitcoiners had concerns about the "foundation" long before me and I now stand with them.

If I recall correctly, the current board members have a two year term.  That struck me as a little odd as generally the initial board of a new organisation like this is basically a steering committee and elections of office-bearers from the membership are held reasonably rapidly.

I also seem to recall that they won't be making public how they spend their funds, which is also an odd decision.

They need to maintain their 'independence' from oversight to help them regulate Bitcoin :P

All these elements in the bitcoin eco-system which are not breathing the spirit of decentralisation and p2p are enemies for the project.
That starts with way too dominant exchanges like MtGox, mining pools controlling a large part of the mining power and also touches the problem that the core developer team has a central power (that does not mean any disrespect, but I think that is a problematic situation - at least a potential risk for the future).

So in fact we have something like a central bank (not to control money issueing but we got central power structures).
The bitcoin foundation seems to me just another part in the wrong direction.

Why not use the power in the underlying technology to create a democratic system out of these problematic regions?

Peer2Peer exchanges are in discussion and I hope they become reality soon!

A voting mechanism could be implemented to be used as a tool to find global democratic consensus.
Some ideas like liquid democracy used by the pirate parties (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liquid_Democracy#Delegated_voting) could be applied. So basically every bitcoin user would have the same voting power (not less then any company paying a gold premium membership). But of course there are situations where he prefers to delegate his vote to someone else who has more expertise. So a fluent delegate system could lead automatically to elected "board members" as well as it could be used as basis for decisions implemented by the core developer team.

I do not say that this process is easy. But I think for the money of the future we need also new structures and not concepts from the last century.

This. Regulation is the enemy of Bitcoin. Regulation won't make volatility go away - volatility will go away on its own once market-makers start getting serious, liquidity develops, super-concentrated positions are diluted, and exchanges get their acts together. We don't need regulation to do these things, but regulation will surely increase centralization and corruption among the already-established bitcoin companies; same thing it has done in every other industry. We don't need a socialist in charge of the Foundation.

Governments need to come to bitcoin on Bitcoin's own terms, not the other way around. And it's our jobs to make our governments realize this - by continuing to use bitcoin in as free a manner as possible. Continuing to navigate our way around the KYC/IRS traps set up for us, and avoiding the companies that could become "too big to fail" thanks to regulatory advantage.

Voted 'hell no'.  The guy is making me money, and is my best bet to make a genuine fortune.  Three cheers for ~vess!

Now, how about an update on Coinlab/MtGox for Christsake!

Lol, a vote with your dollars. I like it.

Good point - unless it's FAKE regulation - like those on Wall Street enjoy.  Then it becomes "unfair advantage".
And guess what: the bitcoin regulation bribe/payoff will be hard to track... LOL

Humor - Swap Meet Louie:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2gZr6w82zAA

Well I have to admit, with shame, that I've yet to contribute to the foundation.

I was one of the distinct minority who spoke up with reservations about the Bitcoin Foundation's creation prior to the event.  But we got it now so there is little reason not to go ahead and make lemonade out of lemons.

This is just about the worst possible reasoning you could ever make for giving your support to any kind of authority, ever.

I agree.

But I also reiterate 'go ~vess!'  Some things are well worth standing on principle, some are not, and some switch categories.  Bitcoin is among the last group.  To me.

I was never strongly against the BCF anyway.  Just voiced some theoretical concerns and reservations about how it could influence the evolution of the Bitcoin solution.  I cannot help but feel slightly vindicated at this point.

Huh. What evidence do you have that the Foundation has been hurting the evolution of Bitcoin?

Because it seems to me things have been going gangbusters since the Foundation was formed (with all the usual chaos and drama).

Or, to be less polite to all the haters: we've all been working our asses off (especially Peter), to make Bitcoin a success. What have you anonymous cowards been doing besides spouting off about things you know NOTHING about?

I'm sure many of the 'Anonymous cowards' have contributed in various ways. Personally I don't see a problem with discussion, and being concerned about matters related to bitcoin. I would be more concerned if everything went silent, and nobody cared one way or another. Personally I've set up a Norwegian wiki, link in sig, and also contributed in numerous other ways. As for the other 'Anonymous cowards' I don't know. Let them speak for themselves.  ;D

Gavin, I'm a supporter of the foundation and also a member. I really do appreciate the work you and Peter have done for the community and to ensure that our software is ever evolving. I think some of members of this community are just upset- justified or unjustified- with a perception that the foundation has begun excluding certain voices and also supporting concepts like regulation. After events like SOPA and the net neutrality debate, many people dislike the notion that the government should be involved with bitcoin at this juncture.

We do concede that the exchanges require regulation and entities like bitpay also should have some sort of oversight, but FINCEN makes all of us a little worried. I would really like more clarity on the media strategy as well as a better notion of what regulation means to the leadership of the foundation. Also it would be nice if we could get someone to approach both amazon and paypal to start hammering out a system to accept bitcoins. This alone would mainstream bitcoin and likely get a commitment from amazon to contribute experienced developers to help you.  

Also there has been little work broadcasting that bitcoins can really help international charities. For my course, I've approached several people involved with overseas NPOs who accept bitcoins to do guest lectures so we can enhance the positive side of bitcoin instead of the negative side associated with silk road. What is the foundation's plan?

The better question is What is YOUR plan to help support the foundation to this end.  The foundation is all of us, (or any of you who choose to join).  It will be through our efforts collectively that we will further support the widespread adoption and acceptance of bitcoin.

Remember when you print a finger there are three fingers pointing back at you.

If you are not part of the solution then you are probably part of the problem.

This is a very important discussion.

Glad we are having it.

I expect to hear more clarity at the conference about the bitcoin's goals and plans and learn more about ways I can participate.

Last quarter's plan:  https://bitcoinfoundation.org/blog/?p=99

What is next:  I dunno.  Foundation board will be meeting all day before the conference, and we'll all be talking to lots of people at the conference to figure out what the priorities should be going forward.

As for excluding certain voices:  "okey dokey."  I listen a lot harder to people who are actually getting things done, and have learned to tune out trolls.

Geesh...take a chill pill!

Everyone has their own opinions about the ideal way for Bitcoin to evolve.  Your opinion and mine differ.  They were already a long ways apart when we met.  No harm in that.  You and others have been doing massive amounts of very good work and I have been doing nothing.  Things are going your way because of this, and that is the way the world should work.

I was not being factitious about supporting ~vess's efforts, and by extension yours and the rest of the 'core' developers.  But I also do not believe that it is without value to make it known that alternate viewpoints exist and have certain support from within the community.

At a fundamental level I believe it is a mistake to grow the system toward providing native support for end-users.  The conundrum there is that the better your work is, the more I disagree with it.  And your and ~sipa's and Mike's work is very good.

FTR, I personally am neither anonymous nor fully at liberty to speak my mind at the present time.  It's a balancing act for me.

  Edit: sentence structure, spelling

Gavin,

Is the board meeting open to all members?

It is on the agenda?

I'm a member and this is the first I'm hearing about it.

Thx.

My plan has always been to unite the veterans of the community together to develop a crowdsourced comprehensive introduction to bitcoin for the mainstream. This should be goal number one for the community. The more people who enter the bitcoin world; the better for everyone.

I'm a member as well and it's the first I've heard. But there isn't any exclusion at all :)

Board meetings are board members only.  If you've ever been on the executive team of a company or non-profit I'm sure you can appreciate that if you want to actually get things done (as opposed to wanting to talk endlessly about things) then small, focused meetings are a necessary evil.

The Bitcoin Foundation Members Only Lunch Forum (http://www.bitcoin2013.com/uploads/1/4/9/4/14946598/bitcoin_2013_schedule_updated_4-22-13.pdf) is on the conference schedule.

Gavin did you guys send out an email to all foundation members soliciting feedback for the agenda?

I'm allergic to that kind of bureaucracy. The agenda will probably be decided ten minutes before the meeting, and will probably be something like "Peter talks for ten minutes and answers questions for 20 minutes while everybody is eating. Then we all talk to each other about whatever we like."

One day maybe the Foundation will be big and bloated, and will have lots of staff to prepare Official Agendas, solicit feedback from members months in advance, tabulate the responses, then hire a consultant to figure out how to increase the number of responses received, etc.

I hope I'm not on the Board any more when that happens.

It's called crowdsourcing and it works. You don't have to follow the advice, but it does give you an idea where common problems are occuring and also great ideas from people who have been in the movement since satoshi.

Perhaps if the Foundation were a bit more transparent there would not be so much dissent. As things stand, to Joe Soap off the street, with paid membership and a closed forum it looks like a private members club for well heeled speculators and investors.

Perhaps you could explain why the Foundation was originally registered in Carmel IN and is now defunct.

Current Information
Entity Legal Name:
BITCOIN FOUNDATION INC.
Status: Voluntarily Dissolved
Entity Type: Non-Profit Domestic Corporation

Entity Creation Date: 9/13/2011
Entity Date to Expire:
Entity Inactive Date: 3/28/2013

Also would you care to explain why two men, Andrew Lee and Steve Deprospero, both with affiliations to MtGox are listed as agent and principles in the corporate entry?

Continuing with the transparency theme,

Maybe you could shed some light on the new Foundation registered in Seattle WA and known as THE BITCOIN FOUNDATION, INC. DBA THE BITCOIN FOUNDATION

Why is a wedding photographer named Daryl Garmon listed as Special Address Information using a Seattle PO Box?

Special Address Information
Address   PO Box 31671
City   Seattle
State   WA
Zip   98103

These should be questions for Peter Vessenes not Gavin.  He just happens to have the forethought to post here.

I don't think Peter has weighed in.

I can understand Gavin is upset, as he and his associates probably receive a lot of heat he thinks is unwarranted.

But get this:

Peter Vessenes is the CEO (?) of Coinlab. He's listed as on the Coinlab exceutive team (http://coinlab.com/about). He flew over to Japan, and negotiated with Mark and got him to give up his US and Canadian customer base, bringing it to US soil. At the same time he's the executive director of the Bitcoin Foundation, paying the paycheck of Gavin.

In an early interview, we could see Gavin burning Fiat:

https://i.imgur.com/DNzOQF4.jpg

I remember that was one of the earliest interviews in 2011 in a major media outlet.  Now, he's gone corporate - his paycheck is paid by Vessenes (?), and the rebel attitude has been watered down to something that's über-politically correct. On the board of the Bitcoin Foundation is at least 3 major business owners.

Now, I appreciate the job Gavin and all associates do for bitcoins, but it would be naive to think that they should be immune to criticism. Some criticism will feel unjust, some will actually be unjust, and some will be valid - that's part of the business they're in. But why should the community blindly trust that the Foundation will work for the best interest of the Bitcoin community at large, and not having business interests at the forefront of their mind.

We know Vessenes is a serial entrepreneur, and should we really think he's doing all this work out of the godness of his heart ? Flying to Japan, having MtGox handing over the majority of the customer base, and then hiring the lead developer ?

What happens the day that business interests ask Gavin to introduce certain features to the code ? Will Gavin object and leve the Foundation, or will he oblige ? At what level will the foundation (which is now a private company ?) work with governments to regulate and monitor the usage of bitcoins ?

What stops Vessenes from selling out Coinlab to the biggest bidders in two years, after all he's a serial entrepreneur and afaik never stayed very long with a single company.

I'm sure that if the bitcoin protocol were adjusted to accomodate for a developers fee, to pay the lead and perhaps a couple other devs a year, most people would not object to that, and the devs would then be more independent.

I think it's a knee jerk reaction to bring up the hater flag and call them 'Anonymous cowards' that doesn't contribute. Sure, some people are probably haters that don't contribute much, but personally I do what I can for bitcoins, and I'm not sure if I like the development that I see these days. And certainly, I don't see the problem with asking questions.

We need transparency. True, a smaller group with effective individuals gets more things done than larger groups with a lot of talkers and few doers, but I think the community has a right to ask hard questions, and we shouldn't just sit around and trust the ones running the show to always do the right things. When decisions are made behind closed doors, and we don't know what's going on, then there will be questions.

I can understand Gavin, as his intentions are probably pure, that he get's annoyed with people not trusting him. In fact everyone that uses bitcoins puts their trust in Gavin and associates. I assume Vessenes has a computer, and that he has some free time that he could use to spend on this forum, interacting with the community and answering questions. After all, he's involved rather heavily in bitcoin, and he haven't exactly been very  active on the forums (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=621;sa=showPosts). Now, some people will probably come to his defense that he's busy propelling bitcoin forward and don't have time to talk to kids, trolls and haters on a lowlife internet forum. But get this, there are several highly educated, intelligent and people with all sorts of experience on this forum, people with ideas and questions.

By withdrawing himself from community discussion, he does not instill confidence. Apparently he's quite the nerd, fiddling with parameters for mining software and so on earlier on, and a large portion of the bitcoin user base is what you'd term as 'nerds', still at this stage. So if he wants to gain the trust of the community, then he should participate to a certain degree, not that he needs to live on the forums 24hrs a day, but checking in a couple of times every week, answering questions would not be a good idea. I'm aware that he's probably swamped and superbusy, but it wouldn't take that much time to chime in from time to time, even Gavin and Mark and the Bitinstant guys have time for that.

Mark Karpeles has been around in the community for a long time, and as such, he's gained the trust of the community to a large degree, even though he's received a lot of flak for the lack of scalability of the MtGox exchange in the latest months. But I trust him, and I think many others trust him as well.

Vessenes is the new guy around, and to be trusted, he needs to earn this trust, and why should he stop his 'serial entrepenurship'-mania at this point in time ? I wonder who will buy Coinlab when he goes tired of it. We never know who that's going to be, perhaps it will be one of the big law street firms with good political connections, and then you can be pretty sure there will be put leverage on Gavin and other devs to introduce certain 'features'.

The point is that even though I've admitted that the title of this thread, or the poll for that matter wasn't the best idea - it's also spurred a lot of good discussion - and it's the first time that Gavin has actually lost his cool. I can understand it from his point of view, if he views this as an unjust attack. But it shouldn't be taken personal, it's only a sign that people care about bitcoin, and when there's a new player in town, it's natural to be skeptical.

I don't like the word 'hater' as to me a 'hater' is somebody that's just negative to be negative, and really doesn't have anything constructive to say. I'm skeptical, but I'm not a hater.

But come on, the 'Trust us, leave all the important decisions to us - is the kind of attitude that made Satoshi create Bitcoin in the first place.

For example, the Bitcoin Foundation Forum should be open for reading by everybody. All expenditures should be out in the open, and all letters and official correspondence should be available for everyone to see, unless there's particular reasons not to do so. Whenever the Foundation is approached by governmental agencies, then this should be communicated to the community as well. In short - we want to see what you're doing.

Lastly I will just state that this is my opinion only, and if I used 'we' or the 'community', it's still just a way of phrasing it, and I'm not speaking for anyone else but myself, but believe it or not, I do have the benefit of the community at large as my genuine concern.

For instance, a lot of people will say that the MtGox centralization is a problem. And it's a problem because they have a dis-appropriate amount of all bitcoin trade, not because they cannot be trusted. If the foundation is asked about this, what should they do ? MtGox is funding them, how would they respond ? Yes, we will make MtGox smaller and help other exchanges out ? Do people see the conflicting interests here ? All business owners involved with the foundation, although they might love bitcoin and want to see it succeed, so do they want to have their businesses and their own wallets grow as well. Nothing wrong with that, but then you're not independent.

Thanks for listening.

I would just like to be treated with respect. I love this community and the idea of Bitcoin.

+ 100 for Herodes last reply sums up my thoughts exactly.

To add to my last post.

Andrew Lee is the person listed as registrant of  MT. GOX NORTH AMERICA INC.


Current Entity Name:   MT. GOX NORTH AMERICA INC.
DOS ID #:   4135360
Initial DOS Filing Date:   AUGUST 26, 2011
County:   NEW YORK
Jurisdiction:   NEW YORK
Entity Type:   DOMESTIC BUSINESS CORPORATION
Current Entity Status:   ACTIVE

Selected Entity Address Information
DOS Process (Address to which DOS will mail process if accepted on behalf of the entity)
ANDREW S. LEE


From what I have seen and heard of Gavin he is 100% behind bitcoin and maybe has been a bit too trusting of certain actors in the Foundation.

With the latest development of Mtgox & Coinlab teaming up with Silicon Valley Bank no wonder they are saying "we welcome regulations", they're joining the the too big to fail team.




http://coinlab.com/transition

I dis-agree with tone of your OP to some extent*, but I agree with every word of this entry and encourage all principles of the BCF to study it.  And to honestly try to put the shoe on the other foot and see how it fits.  Especially ~vess.

Gavin:  I have a thick skin and took nothing in your response to me personally, but I could see how others might have read things that way.  Going ~cablepair on us, or even footsteps which might appear to be in that direction will help nobody and particularly not the BCF.  (Most of my personal lack of constructive effort to further Bitcoin has to do with lack of native ability, but it is also the case that I wish to retain the ability to latitude to be a prick when I feel so inclined.)

(*) I happen to agree with ~vess's "“We’d be happy to be regulated,” statement.  THE main beef I have with things is that it is highly important to me philosophically and financially that if 'we' are no longer happy to be regulated for whatever reason, it remains in 'our' control to abandon that policy.  That is THE reason why I am staunchly in favor of retaining a highly difuse and dispurse operational infrastructure even if it comes at the expense of facilitating street-level transactions (and sky high BTC valuations and a wealthy ~tvbcof in the mid-term.)  Again, though, you do the work and you make the call.

I dis-agree with tone of your OP to some extent*, but I agree with every word of this entry and encourage all principles of the BCF to study it.  And to honestly try to put the shoe on the other foot and see how it fits.  Especially ~vess.

Gavin:  I have a thick skin and took nothing in your response to me personally, but I could see how others might have read things that way.  Going ~cablepair on us, or even footsteps which might appear to be in that direction will help nobody and particularly not the BCF.  (Most of my personal lack of constructive effort to further Bitcoin has to do with lack of native ability, but it is also the case that I wish to retain the latitude to be a prick when I feel so inclined.)

(*) I happen to agree with ~vess's "“We’d be happy to be regulated,” statement.  THE main beef I have with things is that it is highly important to me philosophically and financially that if 'we' are no longer happy to be regulated for whatever reason, it remains in 'our' control to abandon that policy.  That is THE reason why I am staunchly in favor of retaining a highly difuse and dispurse operational infrastructure even if it comes at the expense of facilitating street-level transactions (and sky high BTC valuations and a wealthy ~tvbcof in the mid-term.)  Again, though, you do the work and you make the call.

  Edit: drop a mis-placed word. - sorry for the double-post.  Hit quote instead of edit.

Gavin is a developer not the leader- if there ever could be- of bitcoin. He is being paid, and rightfully so, to do groundbreaking work with a small staff and without the authority to enforce a unified vision. That's hard and I'm proud that he has been able to accomplish so much in such a short period of time.

We need to be concurrently focusing on three things guys.

(1) The integration of Bitcoin into the Mainstream as a legitimate and easy to use currency
(2) Convincing large companies like Google, Paypal and Amazon to support bitcoin
(3) Unifying the community around an educational project to ensure all misconceptions, misinformation and general ignorance are removed from the conversation

Doing these three things will guarantee bitcoin never dies nor is regulated out of existence. But you know what it has become clear to me that I don't matter in the foundation's eyes. They want to pursue other things and it's their money so have fun. I'm going to take on the educational project and if anyone wants to join me the door is wide open. We need you.

It'd be easier to give you respect if you weren't lying about your identity and constantly telling people that if they aren't part of your "educational organization" then they will become "obsolete". Try being honest and humble for once. It does wonders for the soul.

My identity? My bio has been posted for all to see. Who do you think I am?

Let me guess, you think 9/11 was an inside job by the Bush administration and we never sent a man to the moon?

This is exactly why I don't come here much any more, and exactly why the Foundation forums are real-name-only, member-only.  None of us have time to respond to all the tinfoil-hat-wearing conspiracy-mongering (I don't remember why "Bitcoin Foundation" was originally a legal entity in the midwest; something about an aborted previous attempt to get one started by... maybe Mt. Gox?  who cares? why does that matter? focus on the present and future, stop worrying about how things weren't done perfectly in the past exactly how you wanted them to happen).

Sigh.  Ok, I'm going to go back to my default "don't feed the trolls" now, and actually get some work done.

It was a tongue in cheek in reference to "Head of the Bitcoin Education Project". Seriously though, every other time I see you post it's about how no one matters anymore unless they sign up for your udemy videos.

The project already has seven contributors making video lectures and also several core devs offering to help review the upcoming lectures on their wallet software. I'm building a website for the project and I'm trying to recruit volunteer members to continue the work. It just got started on Saturday last week. About 400 people signed up for those lectures. That's pretty good progress for a week.

Yes I do believe that if this takes off those outside of it will become irrelevant because a larger and larger percentage of the bitcoin world will have started at that class. Omission can reduce ones standing. But guess what, unlike the foundation, this project is free and open to all. Anyone can contribute. Anyone can help make or vet content. Including you, in fact I'd like you to help.

Why not compare yourself to something else free and open? Like the thousands of youtube videos that already exist? Will you make those videos obsolete?

Yes and no. The issue with any single video is that either it is too brief and doesn't explain concepts like value or anonymity in depth: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Um63OQz3bjo or they are biased in a direction: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DoK8HXMSsNg

Also there is no overarching narrative promising the listener if they commit, then they will end up with some set of knowledge. The goal of the core lecture path is to be a contract with the student that they can both understand basic concepts like why bitcoins have value and how to spend them, but also understand more advanced concepts if they desire like the security concepts of bitcoin, mining and the inner workings of the wallet clients.

Over time this will become a perfect foundation alongside bitcoin.it and bitcoin.stackexchange for anyone who starts with no knowledge and wants to fully integrate himself into the community at whatever level he is comfortable with. We just don't have this Matt. Look at codeacademy.com. In a few years that site will be the starting point for all wannabe web developers. This course seeks to do the same for bitcoin.

Gavin, a simple mailing address on the contact form would put my fears to rest:

https://bitcoinfoundation.org/contact

I sent you all 25 bitcoins to be a lifetime member. I'm glad I paid to support your work, but in retrospect, I wish I had just sent you some bitcoins instead of to the people signing your paycheck.

If the Bitcoin Foundation can't see fit to have a mailing address associated with their name, I'll continue to counsel people to hold onto their bitcoins instead of donating them to the foundation or to just send some btc as donations to individual developers.

Lack of a physical address makes the foundation looks sketchy and casting aspersions on people who wonder why it seems so sketchy is counter-productive.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K5VC58gjnjY Leave the internet alone  >:(

All this conspiracy theory talk is off-topic. This thread is a discussion about Peter Vessenes' opinion that Bitcoin should be regulated.

Personally, I think that if the Bitcoin Foundation is going to promote the idea of regulating Bitcoin, then it is not an organization that I'm comfortable supporting.

I agree completely

They should take a proactive role in suggesting where the regulation should be and lobbying legislation when it comes up. They should also start a dialogue with the membership to discuss regulation and how it impacts them....Oh wait


Yeah...guess that one isn't happening....

Yes this thread is a discussion about Peter Vessenes, you can call it conspiracy theory but I see lack of transparency and possibility of conflict of interest.

Peter Vessenes is Executive Director, Chairman of the Board, and Treasurer of the Bitcoin Foundation.
He is also the CEO of Coinlab and teamed up with Mark Karpeles of MtGox

The Foundation is registered at the same address as Coinlab.

THE BITCOIN FOUNDATION, INC. DBA THE BITCOIN FOUNDATION - http://www.sos.wa.gov/corps/search_detail.aspx?ubi=603279667
Coinlab Inc - http://www.sos.wa.gov/corps/search_detail.aspx?ubi=603158383

Gavin first mooted the idea of a foundation on October 25 2011 here:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=49841.0

Yet Peter Vessenes registered the domain BitCoinFoundation.org almost twelve months earlier at the address of Coinlab

Domain Name:BITCOINFOUNDATION.ORG
Created On:06-Dec-2010 21:40:58 UTC
Last Updated On:11-Jan-2013 07:01:39 UTC
Expiration Date:06-Dec-2021 21:40:58 UTC
Sponsoring Registrar:1API GmbH (R1724-LROR)
Status:CLIENT TRANSFER PROHIBITED
Registrant ID:PVB13589495-DUYX
Registrant Name:Peter Vessenes
Registrant Organization:Bitcoin Foundation
Registrant Street1:Suite 300, 71 Columbia St

http://whois.domaintools.com/bitcoinfoundation.org

Some call it conspiracy theory, Gavin called it "tinfoil-hat-wearing conspiracy-mongering"

I call BS

I don't know Gavin personally, but I know of a lot of people that would give up some liberty and independence for a steady paycheck. Vessenes provides that for him.

And what better method than cornering the market is there than approaching the biggest player and 'take over' their business ?

We must be incredibly naive if we think that major business players enter the market for any other reason that serving their own business interests. I don't say that all businesses are purely motivated by financial gains, but take that element away, and most players will obviously withdraw from the scene.

Lets revisit some of Gavins original ideas about the foundation:



I really like the idea of small decentralized independent groups instead of a central foundation.
Maybe a central foundation could server more as an umbrella for these task forces.
One of Gavins initial points was the payment of the core developers. It is now covered by the foundation but could be better handled from a more open and democratic structure.
Why not create a project where any bitcoiners can contribute with donations to the core dev team to get the independence back?
It would be really a shame if the community could not collect the money needed for salary and other development costs. Many people have already made a fortune with bitcoins so lets share some of that!

On a sidenote, some have profited, but for someone to profit, someone else must lose out. The only ones who are 'guaranteed' to turn a profit are the ones facilitating exchange services. But Bitcoin in itself has a larger value than only it's exchange rate against the $, and I'm sure most users would not object contributing to building and maintaining the bitcoin infrastructure.

Submissive/opportunistic scum (feel free to add morally degenerated) ...?

What other interpration of “We’d be happy to be regulated,” is possible? Oh, he is a cool business man, doing the Coinlab-thing (I really like the website design and the idea of renting/providing computation power). So it's tactical submissivness for opportunistic/idealistic reasons. This is how they teach you (in school/home/...) to deal reasonable and nice with the more and more enlarging monster of govermental  tyranny and other bullies.

@ Herodes: I was referring more to the community people who are really intereseted in bitcoin, not the average user.

And I think we would be enough to contribute a relative small amount to an idea which helps to protect independence.
Look at all the crowd funding projects. Nobody can say that this concept is not working already!

I do not know how much budget is needed for the core development team.
To get a rough estimation we could have a look to the foundation. What is the budget it has gathered yet.  

Let´s sum up what the foundation gets in from the membership fees:
115 lifetime members 115 x 1.9 BTC = 218,5 BTC
211 annual members 211 x 0.19 BTC = 40,09 BTC
2 platinium members: 2x 758.4 BTC = 1516.8 BTC
7 silver members (between 7.6 and 37.9 BTC):
    min: 7x 7.6 BTC = 53.2 BTC
    max: 7x 37.9 BTC = 265.3 BTC

So the overall budget in the foundation would be between: 1828,59 and 2040,69 BTC.
Here you see also the problem that 2 companies fund between 74% and 83% of the budget!
That is for sure not a good situation!

I would like to see it funded in a more decentralized manner.
How would it look without the company funds?
So if you roughly count with 2000 BTC and 300 individual members it would be about 6,6 BTC per member. That does not sound an amount which would be impossible to contribute. I assume there would be more members contributing if the idea is clear and straight.

I wanted to join the foundation, but after reading more about it I was getting more and more sceptical.
If there would be a clearly defined donation page where the members are supporting only the technical development without all the complexity of the politics, I think it would be easier for people to contribute.
Of course the amount anyone contribute could be flexible and open, so anyone can contribute to his personal possibilities.

There is a big difference between "we’d be happy to be regulated" and "we concede that some amount of regulation in inevitable".

Mr. Vessenes welcomes regulation because he believes that he is in a position where regulation will give him a competitive advantage. No one can deny that financial regulation has become a major subsidy for the too-big-to-fail-banks. Mr. Vessenes is looking for a similar subsidy through regulation of bitcoin.

What a douche.

In all fairness I agree with the statement above. I've also been misquoted in the media, I won't go into specifics and it's about 20 years ago, but I said something to the extent of, if I reach a certain target, I will be happy. They managed to print that unless I hit that certain target, I would be unhappy. I never said that.  :) Not that it was technically completely wrong, but I would've not have phrased it that way. So yes, the media is always not very accurate.

If we look at reality though, the fiat side of things must adhere to current rules and regulations in the jurisdiction where an exchange resides, if not, there naturally will be a whole lot of problems cropping up. If bitcoin itself is going to be regulated though, then I think we're looking into a fork, or people moving to alt-coins.

Gavin gave the impression that the Foundation was his idea which, as lead developer was quite acceptable to most of the community. One of the points he stated in that post was this "for example, to hold the Bitcoin trademark, own/control the bitcoin.org domain name, etc." when in fact Peter Vessenes had registered the domain almost twelve months earlier.

As you know from other threads, I've agreed with some of your other criticisms, but this insinuation is pure bunk.

Trade groups like the Linux Foundation, upon which BF was modeled, are formed precisely because they are a vendor neutral, third party way to support key open source developers that are essentially working for the entire community.  Linus Torvalds is paid by the Linux Foundation, so that Intel, AMD, Red Hat, Canonical and other competitors do not need to worry about paying him directly -- with the conflict-of-interest that would imply.

All available evidence shows Gavin, Peter V and BF are acting similarly, with zero evidence to the contrary.

If there is a better, sustainable, more neutral way to fund Gavin or infrastructure projects, we are all open to that.

Being funded by a neutral trade group frees developers to focus on bitcoin's needs full time, without distraction.

Look guys. If you don't like it, there's a pretty simple solution. Just sell Bitcoin and buy Litecoin. Then everyone can return to talking about the serious technical issues and prospects for virtual currencies rather than continuously worrying about this silly foundation that thinks its important, but will actually in time be proved irrelevant.

IMO, when people are doing things that are obviously stupid, it's easier just to let them continue and eventually self destruct, rather than to waste your own time trying to change them.

In other words, "if you don't like it, leave". That's a pretty stupid piece of advice. No offense.

I've always respected your opinions jgarzik.

There's already fees paid for sending bitcoins, what if there was added a certain amount as a dev-fee. A pretty tiny amount pr. transaction, but enough that during one year it would've collected enough btc to fund one or more devs working on Bitcoin, would that be possible ? If not, perhaps showing a line in the official client letting people know they can contribute to the continued success of Bitcoin, almost like Wikipedia does, could that be an option ?

Also, we all know that the founder of bitcoin was/is anonymous, Gavin lashed out towards the 'Anonymous cowards' in this thread, which admittedly made me quite angry,and for a moment I thought, why should I care about Bitcoin and spend my time on it, with a Head Dev that's this ungrateful towards people that actually care about Bitcoin, but Gavin is just a human like the rest of us, and he becomes angry at times, he's no saint. And Bitcoin is greater than him, so even if he left Bitcoin or he continues to 'loose it' on the forums, Bitcoins as an idea and technology is larger than anyone involved in particular. There will always be someone else to take over, so even if Gavin is the Head Dev, he's nothing but an ordinary man, that can be replaced at any time.

Seeing as  Vess (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=621;sa=showPosts) doesn't even post on these forums, which I see some of you refer to as the 'cesspit' of bitcoin, I can't do anything but conclude that Vess don't care much, and that you feel you're part of an elitist club where others have no say, and esp. not the 'Anonymous Cowards'. Too bad then that Satoshi is among these 'Anonymous Cowards'.

The idea of Bitcoin is that of personal freedom and changing the current system. And Bitcoin is far more important than any single person taking part in it. If at one point, the US Govt. decides that Bitcoin is a tool of domestic terrorism, for instance following a terrorist act where it's found that Bitcoin was used to buy parts for a bomb, don't be surprised if some overreaching officials determines that all Bitcoin-devs needs to be brought in for questioning and even be detained, if the Govt. then decides to press charges for whatever reason, there's not much any single person can do with it, even if the charges will be dropped in the end, if will be a complete nightmare to go through.

For example Sven Olaf Kamphuis was recently arrested: http://krebsonsecurity.com/2013/04/dutchman-arrested-in-spamhaus-ddos/

It's not sure he had any actual involvement in the DDOS-attacks described, but he put his name out there for anyone to see and was very vocal about the whole issue, and as thus become an easy target when somebody needed to be arrested.

Satoshi, being it one man or one group, created Bitcoin - and he's to this day anonymous. I believe he saw his idea as a larger thing than himself. If we look at Assange, he's a big narcissist and egomaniac, and there's been a lot of internal unrest in his organization due to the way he run things, and as we can see he's now virtually a prisoner in London, living in the Ecuadorian embassy in London. We could imagine Satoshi suffering the same fate at one point if he came forward.

In my opinion, ideas are more important than the people executing them, esp. when it has a large social impact and has the possibility to change existing structures. The idea that you need to register with your full name in the Bitcoin Foundation and pay a membership fee even to read their forum, speaks mountains for it being an elitist club with no intention of transparency. A lot of people sponsor them indirectly through doing business with all the businesses that have board-members in the foundation. The premium memberships paid by some companies to the foundation would not've been possible without the fees paid by users for using the services of these companies.

The 'trust us - we will only work to the benefit of Bitcoin'-attitude doesn't cut it. As we know power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. If the people involved care about transparency and being a part of the community, they should involve the community more.

I have no reason to think Gavin is not a good man, wanting the best for bitcoin, but as time has showed through history, many projects have started with good intentions, and then there's battle's of power, and we're left with structures that we see in the current system that we're trying to battle: Closed systems where only a few decides what will really happen.

If the foundation really cared about bitcoin, it would seek to desentralize bitcoin trade, for instance by supporting the development of an open source trading platform that could then be used by anyone wanting to start their own exchange.

Lastly: I'm sure a lot of you are doing a great job, and that some of the criticism may seem unjust, but dismissing criticism entirely, or just frowning about it, is not a good thing. It's also Gavins choice to do interviews and being a public figure in the Bitcoin world. If he's chose to be anonymous like Satoshi, and chose to hide his identity, it wouldn't have been a problem for me. As I said earlier, an idea, a concept and a philosophy is far more important than the people executing it. And as such I think being 'anonymous', 'pseudo-anonymous' or putting your name out there is a personal choice. And as such, I don't think the people not putting out their 'real names' are 'Anonymous Cowards'. They might be 'anonymous' or 'pseudo-anonymous', but that doesn't imply that they're automatically cowards. They may be exactly the opposite, but they simply may have no desire to have their name out there on the Internet for everyone to peak at. For some people personal recognition, getting attention etc. is important, for some others it's not important at all. They work silently for a greater cause without expecting fame in return.

But the Foundation and everyone else involved in Bitcoin, should expect and welcome all criticism towards what they do. It means people are involved and interested, and I never saw that as a bad thing. However, there may always be some unwarranted criticism that's far out there that's quite different from constructive criticism, but intelligent people are able to see through that, and is able to ignore/briefly respond to the unjust criticism and then dicuss with the people that gives constructive crisicism. The attitude: "We're always right, and the others are idiots" is not a healthy attitude.

For instance, one of the things I like about MtGox, is that if you have an important query, you can actually go on irc and talk with Mark directly. Admittedly he's not always on, but if he's on and available, he will most often attend to the issues at hand. That's a direct line to the CEO of a company! How many other companies deliver the same opportunity ? Now, I realize that it's not feasible for all companies to do, as some companies are simply too big. But it certainly builds trust within the community.

As someone else in this thread mentioned: "I just want to be treated with respect, and be shown that you care". And that about sums it up. No matter how angry or unjust one thinks something is, having a major role within the Bitcoin ecosystem means that a lot of people look up to you. I kind of looked up to Gavin before his outburst as well. But in reality, we're all just humans with different positions within the ecosystem, and while some of us has a 'higher' position than others, that doesn't mean those people are 'worth more' or have the right to dismiss the criticism and input of others. The users of Bitcoin, which very often is very passionate about Bitcoin, is what makes the whole thing possible, and as such those in 'lead'-positions should be grateful that the users actually care, and not call them 'Anonymous cowards'. What I personally fear is that Bitcoin is starting to be run by big corporate entities that stop caring for it's users. Too many companies have become so big that it's not important to them to actually treat their users with respect and dignity.

That's all - thanks for listening.

This is what bitcoin community is powered by. Actual intellectuall people. Don't play with us BCF.

@Herodes: +100

I've pm'ed Vess to ask him to get input to this thread.

Here's what I wrote to him:


If anyone else wants to have his input here, they could pm him:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=621

Not going to happen

+1000000 btc

So you're saying a self proclaimed Bitcoin nerd, who obviously have a computer, and have an account on this forum and have used it actively before, and just recently signed in, and overall have what you'd call an active social presence online would not be able to spend 30 minutes of his time, reading through this thread and give a calm, intelligent and fruitful response ? I'm pretty sure he's aware of this thread, and avoiding it doesn't not calm any worries that people may have. If he wants to give a response, he's fully capable of doing so, choosing not to is another matter entirely. I think there's many valid points put forth in this thread.

I believe he will chime in, contain himself and give some polite input.

Vess and others at the foundation have become increasingly more difficult to communicate with outside of their predetermined media events. They seldom respond to PMs and emails and also have started moving more discussion over the the foundation's forum. Forgive my cynicism, but I don't think you fully understand what is going on. It's a power play for Bitcoin not an attempt to gain consensus and support in the community.

I'm concerned about what's going on, and that's why I made this thread in the first place. I'm fully aware that most 'real business' is done by men in suits in meatspace.

Vess was last active April 27, 2013, 04:19:56 AM, this thread was made the 16th of April, so if he wanted to chime in, he would've had the possibility to do so.

It's also a bit startling that you're talking about cynicism, as I've already stated numerous times that we must not be naive. You state that I don't fully understand what's going on, could you please enligheten me as to what's going on ? Perhaps you have some sources, or some information that would be beneficial to us ? As the transition is going to happen early in May, he and his associates are probably super busy as well, but you've always got 15 minutes to look at something if you really want to..

Superlative post Herodes.


I suspect there are discussions ongoing as to how to mitigate/spin the facts of the Foundation's registration I highlighted earlier before Mr. Vessenes makes any statement.

Here is an interesting article I just finished reading:

The Old Radical: How Bitcoin Is Being Destroyed

http://themonetaryfuture.blogspot.co.uk/2012/10/the-old-radical-how-bitcoin-is-being.html

One of the comments appears to me to be particularly insightful.

"Within a year the Bitcoin Foundation will announce a partnership to increase Bitcoin's legitimacy by optionally "certifying" coins with a sovereign authority of your choice. It will be added to the "official" client distributed from bitcoin.org.

Within two years the vast majority of the network will be running such clients. Any uncertified coins sent or received will be marked in bright red in the transaction log.

Within three years the exchange rate for uncertified coins will plunge to 5% of that for certified coins. Merchants will refuse to accept them since it's such a hassle to deal with "second class" coins that can't be sold on MtGox or used to buy metals from CoinaBul."

I think it would be good to put that to rest. As it stands it seems like it was a first attempt of MtGox to start the foundation, and for some reason it didn't work out to well, it was disbanded, and they started over again. If you're concerned about this, I'm sure Mark could fill you inn. I'm pretty sure there's nothing too look deeper into right there. I think it was also debunked earlier in this thread. And past is the past.


It's left to see what's happening, but it looks somewhat dodgy at this point.

*bump* Bringing this to the front page again. Waiting for Vess' answer.

I'll I know is what I read on these forums and the conduct of foundation members. There seems to be a very direct effort to centralize and legitimize bitcoin around a singular group. I meant no offense in my comments. I say this exact pattern of behavior before when I worked for Ron Paul back in 2007-8 with the tea party. We watched as it became a proxy of the republican party and there was nothing we could do about it.


You're not to get one. He has no incentive to participate in their words "conspiracy theories" and "forum trolling". But thank you for bringing this to the community's attention Herodes. You're a good guy (I presume you're a guy, but if you'd like me to imagine you as an attractive girl, then I can do that too ;))

No offence taken. ;) But I highly doubt I fit the definition of a Troll (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Troll_%28Internet%29).

When Gavin is saying that about us, I suspect their feelings are really clear.

I rather think it was a reaction to Gavin feeling the criticism was unjust, and that him and Vessens have done a whole lot more for Bitcoin than most others. Thus he felt the criticism was unjust and his blood started to boil, and as just being a human, and maybe being in a bad mood from a prolonged coding-session, he 'lost it'. I don't think he should brush our input off as trolling though. And I think a lot of people are watching what he says, so his words has more weight than those of many others. For instance, it's very interesting which direction the project is going. Will Gavin have the balls to stand up against pressure if there are demands (from those giving him a paycheck) that deviates from Satoshi's orginal intentions ? Will he then simply quit the Foundation, and keep working on Bitcoin, or will he cave in to the pressure ? And if he does, what do we do ?

Those are very solid questions. If we really want to be nice, then why don't we just create a fund to pay Gavin directly? Then this problem goes away entirely.

To be a bit concrete:

Source: https://bitcoinfoundation.org/blog/?p=99

The USGAO site:
http://www.gao.gov/about/index.html

It would be interesting to get more information about that meeting, even a transcript, and to get to know what the purpose of that meeting was. It doesn't strike me as very obvious that this is the right organization to talk to in regards to Bitcoin issues? But I might be wrong.


So I guess that's how it works, the Bitcoin Foundation speak with GAO, who then again relays information in an official manner to Congress ?

But still, I'm sure a lot of people are curious as to what the talks was about,and what the Bitcoin Foundation aim to achieve.

It is a practical matter of fact that 'transparency' is often at odds with 'getting things done.'  That was the stated rational for not inviting lesser members of the Bitcoin Foundation to certain meetings, or even informing them that such meetings were scheduled.

It is an unfortunate matter of fact that the above reality leaves 'things' as an undefined term subject to much speculation.  Ultimately the Bitcoin Foundation will have to balance out the pro's and con's of 'transparency' as they see fit.

Opening up their forums or asking for transcripts, that I assume exists anyway, shouldn't be too much to ask ? Transparency need not be down to the last details of what they're up to, neither need it be non-existant. Some golden middle-way should be possible. I'm aware that too much bureaucracy hinders progress, but again - why should we trust only a small group to always do the right things ?

It's a personal judgement call, and 'the right thing' means different things to different people.

I'm not a particularly trusting person (which is part of why Bitcoin appeals to me) so I value 'transparency' very highly.  If the BCF does not, this cannot help but detract from the value I see in that body.  I have less inclinations than ever to 'buy in' in order to achieve visibility into that organization and never had much in the first place.  Outwardly it appears that their interests and certain of mine (specifically, 'getting rich') are aligned and it would cost me more than it is worth to validate that.

I would expect most people to put their full faith and trust in the BCF absent a very obvious calamity.  This is the way the human brain tends to be wired.

Seems like some others think I've got some sound input as well, apart from Vess.


This means he's received my PM, but he's declined to make any comment. Seems like he don't care to me. As for the reasons, it's up to anyone to speculate.. If he took the community seriously, he should've given some input imo.

The path of least resistance after being delivered an ass-whoopin' is to retire to some cloistered environ to lick one's wounds and draw comfort by commiserating with one's friends about the 'cesspool' nature of this forum.

A mature and intelligent man would be able to elevate himself over personal emotions, see the issues at hand and give an appropriate response. Failing to do so can only negatively impact Vess' reputation. Even chiming in to say: "Hi, thanks for your concerns, I know about the thread - and please let me get some time to read it through, and I will give you some reply in due time would be better than not responding at all.

A picture comes to mind:
http://bloggingblue.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/Ostrich-man-head-in-sand.gif?bfc6c1

The questions you have asked are valid. I have asked valid questions. Many in this community has and will continue to do. We never get a response other than we are trolls or conspiracy theorists.

I'm thinking we really should consider a fork.

They're the fork. We're what Bitcoin has always been.

I was in the process of opening a brick and mortar Bitcoin biz. After seeing the price of Bitcoin get hijacked by the owners of Gox, whoever they are at this point, I no longer have faith in the honesty of the price of bitcoins as set by Mtgox, so I won't put any more energy into their rigged carnival game.

I'll hold my coins and see where they are in a few months. If Gox is still in the picture, the game is still rigged.

Wow that’s pretty severe. MtGox (I was going to say Mark Karpeles but that’s not fair – there are others working with him too)  for all their faults is Bitcoin and has been from the beginning. Without MtGox there would pretty much not be a Bitcoin. I’m not a major MtGox advocate but I do recognize their position in the community. There may come a time when true competition will come along and change that (I thought it might be TradeHill) but for now Bitcoin will cease to exist in it's present form without them.

We need a p2p bitcoin exchange

Without Silk Road, there wouldn't have been an MtGox.

Maybe Mark is DPR and Satoshi!  ;D

Board meetings of the foundation will be interesting now.

You mean with Mark and Peter yuck-yuck'ing about engineering an earthquake which shook a lot of BTC out of the weak hands in yokel-land?

Changed my mind (but to lazy to change my vote.)  The guy is costing me money.  Take a hike ~vess!

And as for the update, thanks for nothing!

:)

- all been working our asses off (especially Peter)  - is that the kind of work bitcoin need?

so i guess that discussion can be closed now. no one with a brain would like to have vess anymore as director or even member of the bitcoin foundation. in fact the foundation itself should close down if it was so easy to get occupied by such persons. shame on you vess. and my confidence in the other board members has also shrunk significantly. you should have known this guy better!
just the 2 cents of an anonymous coward.

I find it disturbing that the CEO of the Bitcoin Foundation files a lawsuit against another board member only two weeks before the Foundation’s much touted “Future of Payments” conference.  The lawsuit couldn’t have waited until after the conference, after Peter and Mark had an opportunity at the conference to meet for an hour or two in a last attempt to works things out?  Was Peter thinking about how this would affect the conference including the negative publicity for Bitcoin leading into the conference?

Good point, which any intelligent businessman and upstanding individual of this community would've taken into account before coming with this knee-jerk lawsuit. Now, the press at the Conference is going to ask a lot of questions about this lawsuit. As we know - the press loves controversy and drama, and now this - a cryptocurrency, a foundation were board members sue each other. It's going to be lots of articles about this.

But then again, somebody said, you're not a real company until you get sued..

I feel sorry for Karpeles - he'll be walking into a lion's den at the conference. It looks to me like BC Foundation trying to do a hostile takeover on Mt Gox. Gavin is staying mute, Ver claims he knew nothing, the others are silent. Rubbish, they've been planning all of this for months!

Gavin is paid by the Foundation, so his hands are tied, unless he wants to risk losing his paycheck.

And here's his answer:
https://gist.github.com/gavinandresen/5509626


I think his response is condescending, like we're all kids - and he's the only one with a brain around. Also he says essentially he doesn't care about the whole thing. Then a better stance would be to say absolutely nothing, when you have nothing to contribute. Also, the fact that they're suing each other (foundation members) is quite relevant now with the upcoming conference.

Perhaps Gavin should talk to the community about making a fund paying his wage ? An apolitical fund, where all contributions are anonymous, perhaps this could even be baked into the fee-structure in the official client ?

Did you see my post in the forum?

Personally I'd trust mark over Coinlab.   He's done way more for the community.

A fund for paying Gavin (and other core devs) would be great. But I'm sure this should not be part of any client.

An interesting hypothetical.

If I were Karpeles (in this situation assuming it model reality) I'd be sending a message from Japan along the lines of "Suck my big liquidity stick."  I'm guessing that other source of liquidity have developed at this point, but Marks taps into the distributed and un-savy pool which is still probably where the richest BTC ore is to be found.  Not only does Mt. Gox have this advantage, but also a certain amount of isolation from the direct influence of the US regulatory millstones.  I'd guess he probably has the upper hand were all-out war to break out.

For my part, I had been looking forward to working through Coinlab (if/when I needed to in order to dump some BTC.)  I now would prefer Mt. Gox though I'll be keenly interested as the gaps in our (us plebs) understanding of what's going down get filled in.

My proposal has always been a charity pool which keeps the coins it generates and donates them to a dev foundation. We could resolve two problems in one. First the 51% hash issue by negotiating with pool operators to commit to a cap (say 45%) of total hash power with overflow donated to the pool. Second, the GPU obsolescence issue due to ASICs. People will have collectively millions of dollars worth of hardware that will go dark. Combined it is still worth a lot and would generate a lot of revenue for a charity pool.

I saw Gavin's response and termed it "mute", but "non-committal" would be a more accurate representation of it ("weak" could be applicable as well).
My guess is that he's just hoping to avoid another giant flame war, and maybe feels a little guilty for being associated with the lawsuit via the Foundation.



I don't think Gavin needs to worry about his paycheck - can't he just dump 5% of his BTC holdings? BTW baking a fee into the client is a horrible idea.


The value of Bitcoin is in:

 * Satoshi's C++ code
 * Mt Gox's trading infrastructure
 * Bitcoin network that people here run on their own dimes
 * Gavin & other developers' brains
 * NOT some venture capital douchebag's e-wallet

There are already fees when sending bitcoins with the official client. If there was a miniscule increase of those, and it would be used to further the work with the Bitcoin infra-structure - would it be bad ?

Yes ... think it through.

How would you suggest the devs are funded ?

A crazy thought, but perhaps actual donations from people who own BTC.

Yes, I've also suggested this before - kind of like the wikimedia fundraising campaign ?

If Gavin started an account on ReDonate I'd sign up for a monthly donation, and I imagine quite a few other people would do the same.

Wait - is it even possible that a key bitcoin dev has no money?  Any exchange with half a brain (although maybe this doesn't exist yet) would put him on salary just to pick his nose all day - the guy knows stuff! Not to mention all of the mining/arbitrage opportunities. As I said, surely these people must have millions worth of BTC. Not saying they should work for nothing, but sheesh, it doesn't take much brain power to find a way to get paid in this game...  Are you geeks unable to think outside of the "must have cubicle and salary" mentality?

I would like to nominate Peter Vessenes for a scammer tag.  The selling before the lawsuit was supicious.  Then the filing just in time for The Golden Week in Japan when all banks there are closed.  Coincidence?  No way.  And trying to heist 75 million USD from the largest and most important bitcoin exchange.  Deserves a scammer tag if you ask me.

I'm more concerned with how much people care about bitcoin foundation. It's a private club, they can do what they want. If peter wants to run it into the ground and others signed up for it, then let them.

Eh, if they were busy with trading, mining and arbitraging like a good obsessive-compulsive daytrader all day, there would be very little development... Bitcoin could really use some more devs that are paid full time to work on the code (and testing!).

Not really. But that is one of the few ways to get more dev hours to be spent on Bitcoin. Specialization is important. If, for example, devs were to start their own companies, a lot of their time will be spent on organizational issues and not developing.
This is the same kind of question as "why doesn't Gavin become the face and press contact of Bitcoin". Right, if he were to talk to press all day he couldn't do the thing that's currently most beneficial to Bitcoin anymore.

I wonder how many people who voted No at the beginning of the thread have changed their minds.

My mind has changed to a definite yes, get rid of this guy.  This is just too much baggage and conflict of interest.

Otherwise, the so-called Bitcoin Foundation is a joke and deserves a scammer tag.

Please Read This Personal Appeal From Bitcoin Founder Satoshi Nakamoto.

I suppose it could work.  So long as we don't have to look at some picture of some creepy looking guy.

http://www.nirmal.com.np/images/62/personal_appeal_from_Wikipedia_founder_Jimmy_Wales_donation.jpg

I was thinking about a more subtle way of asking for donations in the official client and on the official bitcoin.org page.

FWIW, I was joking about changing my vote to yes (or wishing to if I were not lazy.)  On the other hand, voting 'no' in the first place was a bit of a joke as well.

The Bitcoin Foundation itself has been something of a joke(-ish type thing) in my mind for a while and to say the honest truth I actually could barely give a shit about who's who in the organization.  The thing is so opaque that it is not very possible to form a valid opinion anyway.

I do believe that someone's profits are likely in the top-most level of what is important to these guys, and that probably means high BTC values.  It's just a matter of figuring out the strategy and timings of BCF's operations and figure out how that translates into actions which will maximizing my profit.  On the BTC I choose to sell at least.

Anyone care to inform me why the hell was this person elected as director in the first place?

Self appointed

So essentially he created this foundation and invited every power ranger to join?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mJgC9LEBTuQ

Basically the video explains it

Exactly Peter has a massive conflict of interests at the very least.

That's pretty silly for a trade group, especially in a community that believes in the free market.

I don't buy it - Let's hope that surely any core dev has been mining continuously for the last 3 years? Any self-respecting geek has a rig running somewhere that really only requires paying the ISP/electric bills after the up-front work and expense? All I can say is that any core bitcoin dev who doesn't have money right now must've made some REALLY BAD financial decisions...



Not what I said at all. If I had the money I would pay Gavin to do WHATEVER HE WANTS ALL DAY as long as he occasionally helped me with my bitcoin exchange business... Just having the guy onboard gives credibility and security to any company. Remember when Linus worked for the Crusoe processor guys?

http://pandodaily.com/2013/05/14/dept-of-homeland-security-freezes-accounts-between-dwolla-and-bitcoin-exchange-mt-gox/




Same Tim Draper aka Timothy C. Draper (?) (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timothy_C._Draper):

http://www.solidarity-us.org/site/node/1531

Not sure about the rest of you, but if it's the same person involved in both these cases (Tim Draper), I would be very surprised if he has any other goal at all than enrichment for his own company and person. I haven't dug deep into it, but from the looks of it, the attempt at making that legislation doesn't go well with wanting the best for 'the community at large', so personally if I knew that, i wouldn't take his money at all. As the saying goes, adults seldom change their ways..


Edit: Why did I put this here? Given the above has merit, it seems like Vessenes has done little research into his partners before accepting to take their money. It seems very strange to claim.

Vessenes writes:

http://coinlab.com/status (Click on the May 2nd update)


He mentions his kids here, yet he takes on cooperation with a man seeking to make education much harder to get for kids from poor families. Given these facts are correct, Vessenes is either malicious, incompetent or very naive, I don't know which it would be, perhaps a combination ?

Indeed it is the same Timothy C. Draper.

From Forbes:

"In the first official venture capital raise for a direct investment in bitcoin, CoinLab secured $500,000 today from seed stage Silicon Valley firm Draper Associates and others, including Seattle angel investor Geoff Entress, former assistant treasurer at Microsoft Jack Jolley, and familiar bitcoin investor Roger Ver.

Draper Associates also known as Draper Fisher Jurvetson.

http://www.drapervc.com/team/ (see tab header "Draper Associates")

http://ballotpedia.org/wiki/index.php/Timothy_C._Draper

The microsoft connection is also interesting as (from wikipedia) "Draper invested in and contributed to the development of", among other things Hotmail.

Um, NO. Wrong.

 I don't "believe" in a free market - I KNOW that free markets are important - that's why there shouldn't be ANY type of "foundation" for bitcoin made up of people trying to promote their own business interests. Meaning, its great for Peter to be a businessman, but he becomes a scummy fuck commie when he tries to give himself a competitive edge by giving himself a mandate ala his own "foundation". He's trying to slide the monopoly power of government onto bitcoin, so that it can be regulated to his advantage.

That's utter bullshit, and you know it Garzik. Of course, I had you pegged as a statist from the moment you brought up regulation in an interview back in 2011.


How much does everyone want to bet that Draper, Vessenes, and everyone else associated with or promoting the "foundation", are all part of the same old Secret-Handshake-club? Y'know, the one with the square and compass ran by the same old kids who think they're entitled because of their families heritage?

Peter should resign.  Mt Gox wont be at bitcoin conference.  Mt gox gave 10000 btc to bitcoin foundation.  Peter is ceo of foundation.  Foundation organized conference.  There is a conflict of interest here.

Starting to get a little stinky ... especially if there is any link between DHS action against Mt. Gox and Vessenes/Draper/etc.

Hey, apparently he got the fucking message (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=252411.0).

Good riddance.

After savaging Bitcoinica, the BCF, and Coinlab this one-man wrecking crew moves on to his next adventure.  The Winkle ETF perhaps?

 edit:  Here's a suggestion to do the most damage to Bitcoin as possible:  A tainting authority!

hmm strange news indeed