Why would they go through all the trouble to buy hash power, if they can bribe a couple of government employees to change policies and get Bitcoin banned or regulated? They can even bribe them to stop 3rd party initiatives like the ETF for that matter.

Just look at how effective they were to slow down Bitcoin in New York with the BitLicense. ^grrrrrrrr^

If you have the government in your pocket, you do not need the miners and you do not need Bitcoin. They have not done this aggressively yet, because they know this will turn into a shit show if they do, so they are doing this slowly by doing small things. < Deny ETF / Strict regulations on exchanges / BitLicense >

I am glad some people are not into the technical part of this discussion, because we already have a bunch of drama queens taking all the shine in conflicts like this. < Roger Dodger & Mike Hearn aka RageQuit >

These discussions can get messy at times, because a lot of Testosterone is involved here to see who will be the Alpha male in this community or even in the forums. < Now that I think of this, where are the females?>  ^smile^

Just one more reason why we should not allow dodgy developers to take over this technology. They have chosen Blockchain technology because it was decentralized and had strong security and information on this "ledger" cannot be removed or changed.

Let's hope they will use the strongest Blockchain and not a centralized Blockchain-based technology like OpenLedger or something.

You have to know that FUD is driven by greed and therefore FUD will never stop. It is your responsibility to analyze all of this and figure out what is hype and what is FUD. I prefer to ignore all the noise and just focus on the numbers. Alt coins are closely linked to Bitcoin and usually when Bitcoin goes down, people use Alt coins as a means to protect their wealth.

I try to spot the beginning of the stampede and profit from that and then always buy Bitcoin when the price take a dip. 

He is saying Nigerians are known for scams and what would happen when the Nigerians figure out how they could use Bitcoin to scam people anonymously. The thing is, this might already be happening but due to the nature of Bitcoin's pseudo-anonymity it would be close to impossible to pin that on them.

There might be Nigerians behind Ransomware or Cloud mining Ponzi schemes and we might not even know it. ^grrrrrr^

You have to remember that Bitcoin is just another form of currency and it is not immune to people with criminal minds. We just hope that Bitcoin would be used more by people with good intentions than those people who wants to use it for scams. ^sad^

This is more or less the same as with the internet. The internet are used for more "good" things than "bad" things, so you cannot throw out the baby with the bath water, when some people use it for the wrong reasons.

Why do the Chinese over fish and kill dolphins and whales and kill Rhinos for their horns? Do you think they care about this whole experiment? There are some countries and China are one of them, that would destroy natural resources without blinking twice.

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2016/08/wildlife-south-china-sea-overfishing-threatens-collapse/

The Chinese will suck Bitcoin dry and leave when it fails. Bitcoin is just one more commodity that are being ruthlessly exploited for profits.

Sorry if this sounds harsh, but you can look at several other examples where Chinese are involved. Examples :
Seahorses / Abalone ....................................... and the list goes on and on. ^grrrrrrrrr^

Edit : If OP could develop a alternative that cannot be exploited by anyone, I would support that cause.

The mining Pools are in a way monopolizing decisions from a centralized perspective, because they are throwing their weight around as a group to shift development decisions in their favor. So yes, in a way the do have total control. Today it is Block sizes and tomorrow it might be something worst. < like the 21 Mil coin cap >

Whomever has the minority chain, will be targeted by a 51% attack, that is just the nature of people and even animals in nature. < The weak will not survive >

Scaling is not the push factor here, but rather who will be behind the wheel of this experiment. I would rather limp along with a congested network, than having a network that are not secure. < BU dev's have already shown that they cannot secure the code >

People will leave if they know their money is not secure. They did this with all the services and exchanges that were hacked.

The scaling can still be substituted on the 2cnd Tier < Off-chain services > if it is really a problem. The internet runs on TCP/IP, but everything happens on the Application levels. < This is the level with the highest impact for the users >

What makes you think after all the money and time invested into SegWit that the Core Dev's will even worry about considering this? They are pushing their own agenda and BU dev's are doing the same. It is not about the better solution any more, but rather who will be in control of the experiment. < power grab >

More smaller blocks = Bigger blocks 

I am glad the Canadian companies are coming out strongly against BU and the problems it will bring with to Bitcoin. As a company heavily invested in a technology, it will not build confidence when the technology you are invested in are being attacked by a competitor and in doing so that competitor fails in delivering secure solutions.

Bitcoin Unlimited had two major issues with their code within a week or two and that should not build any confidence with businesses that are heavily invested into Bitcoin. ^hmmmmmm^

If you are too dumb to capitalize on this phenomenon, you should not be into Crypto currencies. I do not only invest in Bitcoin, but rather into Crypto currencies. If I see the hype wave growing, I start buying and I ride it till it lost all power. I have made a lot of money watching this phenomenon and timing it perfectly.

There will always be a bunch of people who will run to Alt coins, when Bitcoin is in trouble and you will need to watch the market and be invested in these Alt coins to collect when it is raining money. ^smile^

What a bullshit article from a bullshit site. This is the kind of thing that makes me furious, because sites like this are famous for posting attention grabbing articles to attract viewers to their site and then once you investigate further, you will find that there are no evidence backing their content. ^grrrrrrr^

The damage that these FUD articles are doing to the Bitcoin community is not good for Bitcoin and they seem to put their own site interest above the interest of Bitcoin. ^hmmmmmm^

Could this be a front site to shill for some unknown competition or even a government sponsored site?

I have seen this share based pay-per-post system on another forum, but the people only paid out weekly at the start and then it changed to monthly and then it stopped. I think the site grew too big and they had to manually calculate the payment based on the shares and that was too much work for them.

After the payment stopped, people left the site and the site closed down. The payment should be automated to make things easier for the site admins to do these payment.

The site was also spammed by a lot of people and the site moderators had to constantly delete posts that did not qualify for payment, which complicated the whole payment process. ^grrrrrrr^

The whole fight for supremacy between Bitcoin Core and Bitcoin Unlimited are putting a hold on many projects that might take Bitcoin to the Moon. There are some companies working in the background, who are still dedicated to the cause and they are quietly making big strides forward in this scene.

I think we should ignore all the noise and just focus on the future for now, because Bitcoin will survive no matter what.

Let them fight for control, but we concentrate on growth and adoption and marketing and the things we have control over. ^smile^   

Yes, Bitcoin has to scale to the levels where PayPal and Credit cards are to be a competitor as a alternative payment option. Satoshi did intend for it to be a alternative P2P cash payment system and not a store of value like some people seem to think.

Security should be our first priority and for that we need the best developers on this planet. ^smile^ I think that is why this debate around BTC Core vs BU is so fierce.

You know the funny thing is, when you are #1 and you are on top, everyone wants to take you down. Bitcoin is constantly under some sort of attack and it always survives. The reason for this is the enormous investment in it's underlying network of users supporting it and the projects that are developed around it.

Bitcoin also has the strongest developers working on the protocol to keep the network running and the hash power backing it is also huge.

Bitcoin has died many times before, like a cat with 1000 lives. ^smile^ 

This is something very similar to BitBiz.io < Account suspended now > They also had a share system built into the forum software to reward people for things they do on the forum. The reason they failed was because the owner lost interest in the project and he wanted the place to be Ad free for a better experience.

You cannot fund a project like this out of your own pocket indefinitely and expect it to survive. You also cannot expect it to succeed if you do not spend time on your own forum to make payments for the work that was done.

They had a excellent idea, but a very bad owner.  

Your negative is the fact that you are linking Bitcoin < Pseudo-anonymity > to people's Social media and Google accounts. This takes away all anonymity that are one of the pro's of working with Bitcoin. ^sad^

One thing I have learned over the years is that you buy on the down turn for most of the more popular Crypto currencies and then sell on the climb before the peak. The safe zone is somewhere in the middle and the trick is to find that spot. The Whales usually only push and pump and dump in small increments, so your timing should work within a small range for BTC and a little bigger range for Alt coins.

This has worked for me and I see this happening now again with DASH and ETH.

This will have too many negative affects for the reduction in hash rate and also decentralization of the network, when a large quantity of miners are split to mine another new Alt coin. The people behind BU knows that Bitcoin has the advantage of the network behind it and would not go the Alt coin route.

Most Alt coins do not make it, because they do not have utility and a network that use their coins. BU is nothing more than a attempt at a hostile takeover. ^grrrrrrr^

I saw somewhere that the Current network is about 3,300,000 TH/s or +/- 240 000 Antminer S9's. So you would need about $250 000 000+ to do this. <120 000 Antminer S9's @ roughly $2100 US = $ 250 000 000 US> This is only for the miners without the other cost to setup the operation.

Banks have investors and even if they manage to stop Bitcoin, it would not be a guarantee that another Crypto currency that are ASIC resistant will not take it's place.