Every core dev have their own plan, and those plans are very complex for public to understand, and they always try to downplay the shortcomings of their solution. So I guess eventually majority of miners will select the solution that is most easy to understand

In this regards, XT is much better than blockstream, since XT does not introduce added complexity. However current core is better than XT, since it does not introduce change at all. When 1MB block start to cause huge problems for transactions, I think if core still insists on 1MB block size, more and more miners will switch to XT, simply because the XT's solution is simpler. Simple means many benefits in the long run

To be honest, I have watched this video several times and never really understand how it works

The complexity in Lightning network will cause huge difficulty when they are trying to convince anyone without enough knowledge in that specific area

Even a simple block size change could create lots of confusion and conflict, lasting for years, such complex change would need at least 10 years to be accepted by the majority, maybe never

Of course if it does not touch the protocol then no one cares, but as I understand it must use a hard fork to implement those changes

Today centralized bitcoin financial institutions like exchanges and online wallet providers are already working well to a degree, and bitcoin network has become their settlement channel. This model works very well that it may not need another solution to increase the complexity. Besides, at small and local scale you don't necessary need trust less model, you even need some trust to humanize the user experience, many people have a habit to rely on authority, they can't live without authority

Mostly correct but the XT should be already happening before the fork, and after the fork the core chain would be relatively thin due to less hash power staying on it

Of course this is only one scenario that when XT really gain 75% of hash power, otherwise the fork won't happen

Pre-fork coins worth much more than after-fork coins

Pre-fork coins are your safe heaven, since you will have both core coin and XT coin after the fork, and reserve the right to dump one of them when you see fit

Where did you get that information? How is that possible?

I don't understand, why selling pre-fork coins now? I just bought some cheap coins. Even there is a fork in near future, I would reserve the right to sell the coins on the chain that I don't like

Roughly, 100K sell order could knock down the exchange rate by 10%

Keep buying... even there will be a fork, the pre-fork coins will worth double

What he said is mostly true, but the way it is presented are still too complex, he should focus on the initial ownership of newly created money, that will make it much easier to understand.

You can not lend out money that you don't have, so central banks must first acquire ownership of those money, then start to lend out them. But they receive the ownership of those money without doing/paying anything, that's the key point of this whole scam

I would call it a divorce, since the winner are not able to prevent the other chain from grow, while in an election, the loser must follow the lead of winner

At first, the winner vs loser would look like bitcoin vs litecoin, however, since both chains have same algorithm, miners are free to switch between these two different chains: When A chain is not profitable, they will go to B chain, thus make B chain stronger, thus B chain regain popularity if someone is pumping up the price of B chain. This kind of situation will drag along for many years to come

Vote is not a way to solve the problem in a decentralized system

Could be far below that, because the biggest promise of bitcoin - limited supply - is broken. It means it does not make any sense to use it as a currency or store value, once in a while its price will crash by 50% when core devs disagree with each other

No, it basically killed the whole concept of currency of limited supply, and then we'd back to the fiat world and forget about this programmer's game

Then there is a chance that a new coin which have built-in mechanism to prevent a protocol change will take over. This kind of design should be in there in the first place

Good question! I believe that it is very difficult to decide even if you have enough knowledge (The more you know the more question you have). In fact I constantly change sides if I consider it from a different view: Maybe Gavin is right in using some force to brake the current deadlock status?

But eventually I prefer the least risky approach when facing uncertainty. Maybe those guys sitting at the top can see far beyond what I can see, but I can not blindly trust anybody, but only take the most conservative approach

Dictatorship is using power to control others, the power does not limit to physical force or political influence, but more and more appeared as knowledge. This kind of dictatorship is very common in Git hosted open source software projects: Anyone who submit a code change in Git would have to be approved by the code reviewer and core devs, e.g. a group of core devs have the right to decide what should be accepted in bitcoin code and what should not. And when they could not reach agreement, there will be a fork

Since bitcoin now have so much influence, there are many people who want to push in some code that is of their interest and reach millions of users around the world by an update of bitcoin protocol. Thus you see Mike wants to push in some code that is useful for Lighthouse project, while Peter wants to push in some code for Lightning network, and someone else might wait in some lines to get bitcoin work with Etherium, and so on... Who should decide what should be included and what should not be? It is better no one should be allow to change the protocol unless in a clear and real crisis that is understandable for everyone. This is similar to that no one should be allowed to change IP protocol while everyone can freely built their own application upon it

Even if XT gained 80% of hash power, bitcoin is going to crash, because more and more people will leave, as they understand this is just another version of USD with another group of dictators

It seems you are not a miner. Industry scale miners are essentially distributed central bank of bitcoin monetary system, they usually have the best possible knowledge and also the wealthiest in this whole ecosystem (It's impossible to design an ASIC miner if you don't know how bitcoin works under the hood), they of course participate in all kinds of political movements, and this is already a potential danger, so that in the future, government only need to control 5-10 guys to control the whole bitcoin network

In this case, you are not shooting your own golden goose, but the competitor's, and make your eggs sell better. It is strange that even Mike and Gavin know such kind of risk is high, they still go ahead with their plan to prepare a fork which brings high uncertainty

I don't know how long they have been fighting each other, but that kind of thing is a norm among a group of decision makers in large organizations. But since bitcoin is not a centralized organization, this traditional way of working is outdated

In fact this revealed one weakness of bitcoin is its centralization of the development, so maybe we should set one dynamic blocksize rule and forbid any future change in protocol to permanently remove this political risk. Gold never changed its property for thousands of years, that's the reason it can be trusted

For a division to work, each coin must have its own complete ecosystem, e.g. enough hash power, enough merchant support, enough exchange support, wallet service provider etc... It is kind of situation like bitcoin and litecoin, but with a slight difference: Both chain use the same algorithm. This means, the chain that have larger hash power can easily double spend on the other chain, thus make it useless. However, even the smaller chain have less than 40% of total hash power, it is still larger than half of the larger chain, so it could easily fight back and cause same damage. So eventually it is a politics about gaining majority of the miner's support, which makes chinese miners a target for lobbying

Again, you never need politics to decide the answer of 1+1, politics only becomes necessary when things has reached a very complex level. So far bitcoin is relatively simple, so it is important to keep it simple to not make it a victim of politicians

I see people constantly talking about vote, this indicated that they don't understand the fundamental difference between a decentralized system and a centralized one

Only in a centralized system, you have to vote in order to force everyone to accept the same rule. In a decentralized system, if part of the participants do not agree with others, they could just fork and start to drive their own project. This is very natural and healthy, and even create some kind of competition
between forks

If you are a normal user, the fork does not affect you too much. However, if you are a serious investor or large industry miner or large exchange, your choice will involve some kind of risk, that's the reason large actors should all make some research on the topic, do their own risk judgement and do not blindly listen to core devs

In worst case, a fork double the amount of bitcoin in existence (core coin and XT coin, both 21 million, total 42 million), bitcoin price cut by half or more. And people will understand any fork is an inflation in bitcoin ecosystem and will reduce the long term credibility of this whole concept. Anyway, it is still better than FED creating 5x more money in a couple of years

It does not matter who invented fire, as soon as the technology is found, it is irrelevant what the inventor want for its future. Nobel invented dynamite but he can't stop people from using his technology to kill each other 

Bitcoin has no problem, it is some of the dev's mindset having problem: They don't want to look at the big picture and try to reach over 90% consensus as much as possible (by making some compromise), instead they insist on their own view and try to politicize the change and split the community. Luckily, bitcoin is totally free to participate, every non-sheeple would use their own brain to make a choice