The truth about the Bitcoin Foundation

[kelsey]

gotta love when the survival of a controlling body of a decentralised  cryptocurrencies hinges on fiat   

[1715050889]

1715050889

[1715050889]

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[tokeweed]

This foundation went from something terrible to a complete joke very fast. It's the same old story: the higher the shelves, the more useless they become.

Actually you will find most stuffs related Bitcoin are completely terrible jokes, think about Mt.Gox or Bter, various scams, drug/gambling, money laundering, shity coins ....

So sad you mentioned this...  It made me realize this is how the world outside of crypto think mostly.

I mean I believe cryptocurrencies could be big one day, but sometimes, with BTC being the currency of the future, could be a pipe dream.

[Cryddit]

Who decided who gets to be the main devs? The Bitcoin Foundation must have a big influence over them considering it pays them. It might not completely control Bitcoin, but it must have a big influence on the main devs, which gives it a certain amount of control over Bitcoin.

If you're willing to hire people, and you have the money, you get to decide whom to hire.  If you were to hire another full-time dev, I'm quite sure the ones hired by the Bitcoin foundation would welcome his or her contributions, the same way they welcome volunteers. 

[cryptocult live]

This does not affect bitcoin negative at all. I hope they shut it down.

Why is everyone so obsessed with TBF? There's enough alternative foundations around to not care about this unappointed and misorganised group of snobs.

[RaginglikeaBoss]

gotta love when the survival of a controlling body of a decentralised   cryptocurrencies hinges on fiat  

This could not be said more accurately or succinctly.

[RodeoX]

So many words, so little understanding.

[kelsey]

So many words, so little understanding.

words spoken by a true bitcoin foundation life member in it for the fiat

example even from just your last post ; "k, I didn't get rich arguing about bitcoin. I got here understanding it."

so I ask you whats the point of being a alternative to the greedy bankers controlled fiat, if those in control of bitcoin are the new greedy bankers?

[bg002h]

I'm glad the new board members are having an impact. Not particularly professional how things have been handled, imho, but the fact is that things are being discussed openly, and that's a good thing. The foundation is what the members make of it. I think lack of funds will make it easier to set priorities...I like the idea of having core mission expenses being paid for by lighthouse style fundraising. If people don't like an idea, it won't get funded. If they do, the support base could be much broader.

[remotemass]

We need books that teach us about bitcoin core source code at the same time as they teach us all the C++ Standard Template Library and prigranning knowledge we may be missing.
Learning C++ with the bitcoin source code without Master...
All that we know you will find difficult even if you know some C++ and OOP.

[Cruxer]

A lot of drama going on right now with the foundation...

Olivier I'm not going to respond to your trolling and false accusations. Enjoy your moment in the spotlight.

Won't respond but by me, too many shady people are in foundation and too many bought their membership :| sad....

[chmod755]

I'm glad the new board members are having an impact. Not particularly professional how things have been handled, imho, but the fact is that things are being discussed openly, and that's a good thing. The foundation is what the members make of it. I think lack of funds will make it easier to set priorities...

The impact of someone bitching about BF management on reddit for easy karma? I'm waiting for them to actually get things done before I'm praising them...

[Bit_Happy]

Everyone has the right to know the truth:

- The Foundation has almost no money left, and just fired 90% of its people. Some will stay on as volunteers.
- Core dev can no longer be funded by it, and Patrick Murck is trying to re-create a new Foundation just for core dev, because the current name is tarnished. Do not fall for this.
- The current Executive Director (Patrick Murck), will be gone in 2 weeks, and they are trying to find the next person to blame everything on.
- Jim Harper was threatened for doing a press release which was (barely) critical of the Foundation after he got elected. The Foundation tries to make sure we hide the truth by subtly threatening us on a regular basis.
- If I get asked to leave the Foundation for telling the truth, so be it. The truth is being told.

Moving forward:

- A special trust fund is being created and I will donate several 100k to pre-pay Gavin’s, Wladimirs and some other core devs wage for the next year (if they choose to accept). The control of this trust fund will be handed over to the core devs, who can decide who can join it. Alternatively, we can give voting power to everyone who puts money in it (pro-rata). I will also organize crowdfunds and help make this fund public. At no point do I want to have any control whatsoever.

- It is up to the members of the Bitcoin Foundation to decide what they want to do now. The bylaws allow for a special board meeting to be called by 15% of members. I would recommend you to do so and ask for all information to be released so you can learn the truth. Additionally I would recommend for you to replace the whole board if you want this organization to last. Alternatively you can vote to shut it down and get your money back. There might not be enough money left in the Foundation to pay its members back, but I will personally try to help make up the difference, even though I have not been part of it.

The lesson for all of us in Bitcoin is to never put any trust in a centralized org again that wanted to represent Bitcoin or the Core Development of Bitcoin.


Well, I have a new respect for "the truth".

[Btcvilla]

The Bitcoin Foundation is stupid, I don't why people are supporting it.

[stevenh512]

power corrupts...you need some kinda rules/setup to tweak the bitcoin core...and perhaps pay for coders etc.....not sure ...how does it work for linux stuff?

Any company (a few obvious examples would be Red Hat, Canonical, Google, IBM) is free to hire developers and/or find volunteer developers to contribute to whatever GNU or Linux projects they want. Those developers submit patches just like you or I could, if the project's developer community (especially core devs) likes the patches they get included. Some of these people eventually end up getting commit access or even being core developers on their chosen project. For companies like Red Hat and Canonical who package their own Linux distributions, if their patches aren't accepted upstream they're still free to maintain those patches and package them with their own distro.

No central authority is really needed beyond those people who have commit access on GitHub (or wherever else the code is stored) reviewing patches and deciding which ones to merge.

[galbros]

Everyone has the right to know the truth:

- The Foundation has almost no money left, and just fired 90% of its people. Some will stay on as volunteers.
- Core dev can no longer be funded by it, and Patrick Murck is trying to re-create a new Foundation just for core dev, because the current name is tarnished. Do not fall for this.
- The current Executive Director (Patrick Murck), will be gone in 2 weeks, and they are trying to find the next person to blame everything on.
- Jim Harper was threatened for doing a press release which was (barely) critical of the Foundation after he got elected. The Foundation tries to make sure we hide the truth by subtly threatening us on a regular basis.
- If I get asked to leave the Foundation for telling the truth, so be it. The truth is being told.

Moving forward:

- A special trust fund is being created and I will donate several 100k to pre-pay Gavin’s, Wladimirs and some other core devs wage for the next year (if they choose to accept). The control of this trust fund will be handed over to the core devs, who can decide who can join it. Alternatively, we can give voting power to everyone who puts money in it (pro-rata). I will also organize crowdfunds and help make this fund public. At no point do I want to have any control whatsoever.

- It is up to the members of the Bitcoin Foundation to decide what they want to do now. The bylaws allow for a special board meeting to be called by 15% of members. I would recommend you to do so and ask for all information to be released so you can learn the truth. Additionally I would recommend for you to replace the whole board if you want this organization to last. Alternatively you can vote to shut it down and get your money back. There might not be enough money left in the Foundation to pay its members back, but I will personally try to help make up the difference, even though I have not been part of it.

The lesson for all of us in Bitcoin is to never put any trust in a centralized org again that wanted to represent Bitcoin or the Core Development of Bitcoin.


Well, I have a new respect for "the truth".

Thanks for laying this out.  Up until now I thought the foundation was pretty much a force for good for bitcoin acceptance and to respond to issues from the general public about bitcoin and represent bitcoin in front of officials.  Now I'm not so sure.  By definition foundations are supposed to have a stable endowment that they administer so if 90% of their funds are really gone that is exceptional mis-management.

[readysalted89]

The Bitcoin Foundation is stupid, I don't why people are supporting it.

There have been too many dodgy characters like Karples associated with it for it to be taken seriously. The only useful thing it does is pay the core devs.

[Snail2]

Who cares? The Foundation always concentrated it's efforts mainly on the US. They are quite insignificant everywhere else in the world.

[kelsey]

Who cares? The Foundation always concentrated it's efforts mainly on the US. They are quite insignificant everywhere else in the world.

Agree Foundations just a US centered seemingly self appointed group, that others pay to join, more concern is the control over the code the core developers have., also the foundations input into various US regulations regarding bitcoin.

Gavin by his own admission only needs to convince 5 others and pretty much anything can be changed in the code. trustless system doesn't mean trust 5 random internet people (that could have any self serving personal interests, or paid by commercial interests) with the code.

In an opensource community why pay the core devs so much, really Gavin needs 100k? Correct me if I am wrong but last time I looked he had atleast 25k bitcoin?

[Anotherthing]

...
In an opensource community why pay the core devs so much, really Gavin needs 100k? Correct me if I am wrong but last time I looked he had atleast 25k bitcoin?

Well, see, that's where you're wrong.
It's not Gavin's fault he got paid so much, apparently it was just an accounting quirk introduced by Miss Lindsay Holland, who only earned $160k/yr, so minor slipups like that are perfectly understandable.

As Gavin put it,

Secretary work?

Lindsay WAS the Foundation at the beginning, and did EVERYTHING (including single-handedly organizing the San Jose conference).

She, like me, got a huge salary boost because the Foundation's original policy was to set the exchange rate for paying salaries once per quarter. That policy changed pretty quickly (neither Lindsay or I had any influence on our own salaries or the policies for how they were paid) to "use the CoinDesk price index on payday."

You have to remember that even simple things like "which exchange rate should be used to pay employees" didn't have simple answers back then (nobody had created a cross-exchange, volume-weighted price index).

I believe she left the Foundation partly because of annoying misogynistic Internet trolls like the ones found in this very thread....

[Btcvilla]

The Bitcoin Foundation is stupid, I don't why people are supporting it.

There have been too many dodgy characters like Karples associated with it for it to be taken seriously. The only useful thing it does is pay the core devs.

And the community can donate to the devs, the Bitcoin Foundation is useless.