Bitcoin XT - Officially #REKT (also goes for BIP101 fraud)

[VeritasSapere]

Well I'm not entirely against hard forks. But I don't think we should rush any hard fork decisions at this point.
Hopefully like you say in the future the new tech will make LN work without huge blocks.

Don't worry , there is definitely not going to be a rush with segwit and relaynetwork improvements being a softfork ..expect 6months to 1 year.
This is why Gavin was freaking out. We aren't at capacity now, but realistically will be sometime in 2016 and a fee market will start to take hold raising prices.
Smart business people should consider this and start creating trustless "off-the chain " solutions like changetip + CLTV contracts as workarounds when these capacity limits are hit.... it is coming, my guess march to may 2016 we will start see tx fees increasing.

I do disagree with this. You do seem reasonable though unlike some of the other Core advocates here. I think there is a major and fundamental ideological disagreement about the future of Bitcoin. This is why I am starting to prefer to just split the network and allow the market to decide over the long term which chain will be considered superior.

[BitUsher]

Under the BIP101 schedule it would take more then twelve years in order to even reach 133MB blocks. The presumption is that within twelve years the technology will have advanced and this will be considered "small".

Hard drive space is the least of my and other devs concerns with blocksize. Why presume future technology when bandwidth hasn't scaled correspondingly as you suggest in the past? Shouldn't we look towards past historical trends of evidence as an indication?

This is why I am starting to prefer to just split the network and allow the market to decide over the long term which chain will be considered superior.

Agreed. Just do it already. What are you waiting for? Most people are already well entrenched in their positions as we have been discussing this for years. It isn't like your changes are difficult to code or anything... the code is already done and in the wild. All you need is one project maintainer to leach off of core's github. 

[VeritasSapere]

Under the BIP101 schedule it would take more then twelve years in order to even reach 133MB blocks. The presumption is that within twelve years the technology will have advanced and this will be considered "small".

Hard drive space is the least of my and other devs concerns with blocksize. Why presume future technology when bandwidth hasn't scaled correspondingly as you suggest in the past? Shouldn't we look towards past historical trends of evidence as an indication?

This is why I am starting to prefer to just split the network and allow the market to decide over the long term which chain will be considered superior.

Agreed. Just do it already. What are you waiting for? Most people are already well entrenched in their positions as we have been discussing this for years.

I am not waiting for anyone, I am running XT nodes and mining in support of BIP101, well until slush got DDOS for mining BIP101 that is. I was also not talking about hardrive space, the size of the blocks are relevant to bandwidth and latency which I agree are the primary limitations for the block size limit.

Slush will re enable BIP101 mining soon before January at least, and hopefully some major companies will make a move soon which will allow this split to occur. It seems like this is what Gavin was hinting towards I hope in one of his latest posts.

Be a little patient... there is stuff happening I've promised not to talk about yet. You aren't the only one unhappy about the priorities of the Bitcoin Core project....

[VeritasSapere]

I consider Mike Hearn, Gavin Andresen, jtoomim and the theZerg to better align with my believes and world view as developers compared to the Core developers you mention. I prefer their understanding of free market economics and Bitcoin governance specifically.

Totally!  I call again to 'stop worrying and love the blockchain fork' (put more amusingly than I was able by...um...that very bright Israeli mining algo specialist who's name escapes me at the moment.)  It would be great for all concerned to focus on what is important to them and not be bothered by the other side.

Now is a great time to do it while Bitcoin is relatively small not having yet been economically necessary on a broad scale.  It is also fairly clear in most people's minds what is the right direction for their goals, and equally importantly, things seem to be pretty binary between a bloating system which gains strength from a broad userbase, and a tight system which derives strength from broad infrastructure support distribution.

Edit: Oh ya, Meni Rosenfeld (or something close to that.)

I think tvbcof said it well, he was able to show merit in both positions, there are not a lot of people within the Bitcoin space that are able to do this, including myself, so well done for that tvbcof.

[BitUsher]

I am not waiting for anyone, I am running XT nodes and mining in support of BIP101, well until slush got DDOS for mining BIP101 that is. I also was not talking about hardrive space, the size of the blocks are relevant to bandwidth and latency which I agree are the primary limitations for the block size limit.

https://github.com/bitcoin/bips/commit/23208ea690c0f1c2b0faa2e82df98f4a6cf7b404

Reflects a BIP that follows the evidence from past historical trends. Do you deny the data?

If you are running XT nodes than you are indeed waiting for others as the code itself needs a miner "minor"super-majority to be activated. Just change the code and start the fork now with your friends. There is nothing holding you back, just 1 line of code.

[VeritasSapere]

I am not waiting for anyone, I am running XT nodes and mining in support of BIP101, well until slush got DDOS for mining BIP101 that is. I also was not talking about hardrive space, the size of the blocks are relevant to bandwidth and latency which I agree are the primary limitations for the block size limit.

https://github.com/bitcoin/bips/commit/23208ea690c0f1c2b0faa2e82df98f4a6cf7b404

Reflects a BIP that follows the evidence from past historical trends. Do you deny the data?

If you are running XT nodes than you are indeed waiting for others as the code itself needs a miner "minor"super-majority to be activated. Just change the code and start the fork now with your friends. There is nothing holding you back, just 1 line of code.

In regards to BIP103, I refuse to "trust" the core developers to implement this. I will believe it when I see it.

I prefer to move with consensus, we need to give this more time to play out. When we do split however it will be much more then just me and a few friends (that was intended as a snarky joke right?). We will be taking the economic majority with us and the most important businesses as well. Since they are in support of BIP101.

https://bitco.in/forum/threads/who-is-for-and-against-expanding-the-block-size-reasonably-soon.119/

You might want to check out Bitcoin unlimited as well:

https://bitco.in/forum/forums/bitcoin-unlimited.15/
http://www.bitcoinunlimited.info/articlesOfFederation

[BitUsher]

I am not waiting for anyone, I am running XT nodes and mining in support of BIP101, well until slush got DDOS for mining BIP101 that is. I also was not talking about hardrive space, the size of the blocks are relevant to bandwidth and latency which I agree are the primary limitations for the block size limit.

https://github.com/bitcoin/bips/commit/23208ea690c0f1c2b0faa2e82df98f4a6cf7b404

Reflects a BIP that follows the evidence from past historical trends. Do you deny the data?

If you are running XT nodes than you are indeed waiting for others as the code itself needs a miner "minor"super-majority to be activated. Just change the code and start the fork now with your friends. There is nothing holding you back, just 1 line of code.

In regards to BIP103, I refuse to "trust" the core developers to implement this. I will believe it when I see it.

I prefer to move with consensus, we need to give this more time to play out. When we do split however it will be much more then just me and a few friends (that was intended as a snarky joke right?). We will be taking the economic majority with us and the most important businesses as well. Since they are in support of BIP101.

https://bitco.in/forum/threads/who-is-for-and-against-expanding-the-block-size-reasonably-soon.119/

You might want to check out Bitcoin unlimited as well:

https://bitco.in/forum/forums/bitcoin-unlimited.15/
http://www.bitcoinunlimited.info/articlesOfFederation

The data doesn't come from the core devs. Do you deny the data that BIP 103 is based upon?
That email thread is very misleading and doesn't accurately represent the change in individuals opinions or the nuanced statements they are making.
Do you really believe that the majority of the miners will agree to XT or BIP101 without 99.5% of the developers support? Hearn and Gavin don't want to even support XT anymore ... do you have other devs willing to maintain the repo?

[VeritasSapere]

I am not waiting for anyone, I am running XT nodes and mining in support of BIP101, well until slush got DDOS for mining BIP101 that is. I also was not talking about hardrive space, the size of the blocks are relevant to bandwidth and latency which I agree are the primary limitations for the block size limit.

https://github.com/bitcoin/bips/commit/23208ea690c0f1c2b0faa2e82df98f4a6cf7b404

Reflects a BIP that follows the evidence from past historical trends. Do you deny the data?

If you are running XT nodes than you are indeed waiting for others as the code itself needs a miner "minor"super-majority to be activated. Just change the code and start the fork now with your friends. There is nothing holding you back, just 1 line of code.

In regards to BIP103, I refuse to "trust" the core developers to implement this. I will believe it when I see it.

I prefer to move with consensus, we need to give this more time to play out. When we do split however it will be much more then just me and a few friends (that was intended as a snarky joke right?). We will be taking the economic majority with us and the most important businesses as well. Since they are in support of BIP101.

https://bitco.in/forum/threads/who-is-for-and-against-expanding-the-block-size-reasonably-soon.119/

You might want to check out Bitcoin unlimited as well:

https://bitco.in/forum/forums/bitcoin-unlimited.15/
http://www.bitcoinunlimited.info/articlesOfFederation

The data doesn't come from the core devs. Do you deny the data that BIP 103 is based upon?
That email thread is very misleading and doesn't accurately represent the change in individuals opinions or the nuanced statements they are making.
Do you really believe that the majority of the miners will agree to XT or BIP101 without 99.5% of the developers support?

I am not denying anything, I have even said on record that I would even support BIP103 when implemented. It is good to keep in mind that the starting point for these proposals are not necessarily already at the limit of our technology today, I think this influences the predictions for growth.

I have reject the concept of "developer consensus" I am finding that this small group of people are becoming more and more irrelevant in terms of what the best path for Bitcoin into the future should be.

Lets say hypothetically we both support BIP103 and so does the economic majority, we would most likely still need to go against the "developer consensus" of Core, in order to have BIP103 implemented. This of course changes when or if Core changes their tune, though presently that does not seem to be the case. Surely there would even be a limit to your patience in regards to increasing the blocksize, even if just hypothetically.

For me actually the most important issue at play here is about the governance of Bitcoin, the blocksize debate has just brought this to the surface. I believe this is part of a greater political awaking within the Bitcoin community and part of a necessary process for the evolution and growth of the Bitcoin protocol as a whole.

[BitUsher]

Lets say hypothetically we both support BIP103 and so does the economic majority, we would most likely still need to go against the "developer consensus" of Core. In order to have it implemented. This of course changes when or if Core changes their tune, though presently that does not seem to be the case. Surely there would even be a limit to your patience in regards to increasing the blocksize, even if just hypothetically, since we can not predict the future.

So you are suggesting the developers can never find consensus with any modest scaling proposal ?.. Segwit is already proving you wrong there... but good thing the developers are irrelevant when it comes to deciding on increasing the blocksize anyways , they just write the code... and this is what you don't seem to understand ... the reason the miners haven't agreed with 101 or Xt is because they don't agree with it and think its too aggressive. They respect the developers opinions because they aren't obtuse and are very knowledgeable in the incentive structures and risks with scaling themselves. 

Miners are the ones that hold the majority of the power. Right now I see up to 5% hashing power possibly supporting XT.

[VeritasSapere]

Lets say hypothetically we both support BIP103 and so does the economic majority, we would most likely still need to go against the "developer consensus" of Core. In order to have it implemented. This of course changes when or if Core changes their tune, though presently that does not seem to be the case. Surely there would even be a limit to your patience in regards to increasing the blocksize, even if just hypothetically, since we can not predict the future.

So you are suggesting the developers can never find consensus with any modest scaling proposal ?.. Segwit is already proving you wrong there... but good thing the developers are irrelevant when it comes to deciding on increasing the blocksize anyways , they just write the code... and this is what you don't seem to understand ... the reason the miners haven't agreed with 101 or Xt is because they don't agree with it and think its too aggressive. They respect the developers opinions because they aren't obtuse and are very knowledgeable in the incentive structures and risks with scaling themselves.  

Miners are the ones that hold the majority of the power. Right now I see up to 5% hashing power possibly supporting XT.

I am not saying that the developers can never find consensus I am saying that they have not found consensus so far. I do not believe Segwit has proven me wrong since it is not going to make any difference whatsoever over the short term, and over the long term the gains are insignificant. After all, blocks are presently full and Core does not have any definite plans in place to increase the blocksize.

I believe it is the economic majority that holds all the power. The way this works in practice is not well understood by most people, it can also not be simplified in such simple terms as you have put it. It is a difficult position that the miners are presently in, and in regards to you thinking they have rejected BIP101 for good I think it is to early to know this, not that I am even in a position to know such a thing and I doubt that you are in such a position yourself, though of course I do not know who you are so you might have access to this type of insider information.

It is also good to keep in mind that the feedback loop for Bitcoin governance is very slow, and without an abundance of well respected alternative implementations, this governance mechanism is still incomplete. This situation is changing rapidly however, in the long run I am confident that the original vision of Satoshi Nakamoto will triumph.

While I don't think Bitcoin is practical for smaller micropayments right now, it will eventually be as storage and bandwidth costs continue to fall.  If Bitcoin catches on on a big scale, it may already be the case by that time.  Another way they can become more practical is if I implement client-only mode and the number of network nodes consolidates into a smaller number of professional server farms.  Whatever size micropayments you need will eventually be practical.  I think in 5 or 10 years, the bandwidth and storage will seem trivial.

Long before the network gets anywhere near as large as that, it would be safe for users to use Simplified Payment Verification (section Cool to check for double spending, which only requires having the chain of block headers, or about 12KB per day.  Only people trying to create new coins would need to run network nodes.  At first, most users would run network nodes, but as the network grows beyond a certain point, it would be left more and more to specialists with server farms of specialized hardware.

The eventual solution will be to not care how big it gets.

But for now, while it’s still small, it’s nice to keep it small so new users can get going faster. When I eventually implement client-only mode, that won’t matter much anymore.

The current system where every user is a network node is not the intended configuration for large scale. That would be like every Usenet user runs their own NNTP server. The design supports letting users just be users.

It can be phased in, like:

if (blocknumber > 115000)
    maxblocksize = largerlimit

It can start being in versions way ahead, so by the time it reaches that block number and goes into effect, the older versions that don't have it are already obsolete.

When we're near the cutoff block number, I can put an alert to old versions to make sure they know they have to upgrade.

The threshold can easily be changed in the future.  We can decide to increase it when the time comes.  It's a good idea to keep it lower as a circuit breaker and increase it as needed.  If we hit the threshold now, it would almost certainly be some kind of flood and not actual use.  Keeping the threshold lower would help limit the amount of wasted disk space in that event.

Bitcoin users might get increasingly tyrannical about limiting the size of the chain so it's easy for lots of users and small devices.

[BitUsher]

I am telling XT supporters to fork with good tithings and best of luck. I like a diversity of implementations and am perfectly willing to be on the wrong fork as there are more important matters at stake than any my investments. It is good to test thoroughly all ideas and if Aggressive scaling is the way to go I will be happy with being proven wrong and may eventually start using your coin if it is the path going forward. Seriously.

P.S...What Satoshi suggests is irrelevant, however. What matters is what works and has been put in the fire and survived. As long as the surviving chain is decentralized , sovereign, fungible, and respected individuals privacy and rights I will be happy.

[VeritasSapere]

I am telling XT supporters to fork with good tithings and best of luck. I like a diversity of implementations and am perfectly willing to be on the wrong fork as there are more important matters at stake than any my investments. It is good to test thoroughly all ideas and if Aggressive scaling is the way to go I will be happy with being proven wrong and may eventually start using your coin if it is the path going forward. Seriously.

P.S...What Satoshi suggests is irrelevant, however. What matters is what works and has been put in the fire and survived. As long as the surviving chain is decentralized , sovereign, fungible, and respected individuals privacy and rights I will be happy.

I agree that what Satoshi suggests is strictly speaking irrelevant. I actually would prefer a more compromised solution as well, which is why I suggest starting BIP101 at 2MB. I would even support BIP100 or BIP103 like you mentioned. Though BIP101 presently seems politically the most practical, already being coded, tested and implemented with an already wide base of support. Since we do need a single banner to rally under after all.

You have a great attitude, I can absolutely respect your position. I also just want what is best for Bitcoin and by extension the world. I want there to be increased adoption while maximizing decentralization and financial freedom. Thank you for not demonizing my position like many other people on this thread have done. I think the best outcome would be if we do both end up on the same chain. At least as users of Bitcoin when the split does happen we will have coins in both chains, just hold on to them and we will both be winners no matter what happens.  

[BitUsher]

I agree that what Satoshi suggests is strictly speaking irrelevant. I actually would prefer a more compromised solution as well, which is why I suggest starting BIP101 at 2MB. I would even support BIP100 or BIP103 like you mentioned. Though BIP101 presently seems politically the most practical, since we do need a single banner to rally under after all.

You have a great attitude, I can absolutely respect your position. I also just want what is best for Bitcoin and by extension the world. I want there to be increased adoption while maximizing decentralization and financial freedom. Thank you for not demonizing my position like many other people on this thread have done. I think the best outcome would be if we do both end up on the same chain. At least as users of Bitcoin when the split happens we will have coins in both chains, just hold on to them and we will both be winners no matter what happens.  

I do believe most XT supports have the best of intentions , including you, Gavin and Hearn. The difference in the opinions for the most part are overblown and superficial. Most core developers agree with raising the limit and always have agreed with raising the limit. One distinction I see is Gavin/Hearn appear to be of the opinion that we need to implement a simple and aggressive solution now and most of the other developers appear more conservative and are ok with hitting the blocklimit where fees start to increase before rolling out changes. In the past we have reached consensus with a critical hardfork overnight when problems arose, doing so now will be more difficult but if fees start creeping up to unreasonble levels and causing problems than the community will quickly come together again and take one of the tested and coded solutions to task. The changes being implemented like segwit will help other scalability solutions down the road so the worst case scenario is a 50/50 fork.... but i don't see that happening based upon the miner votes.  

[johnyj]

I can give you a 10 pages proposal written in ancient chinese + arabic, and tell you this one can solve all the problems for bitcoin, would you accept my proposal? You need to first go into some university for 10 years before you understand what I'm talking about, or you simply ignore it?
-snip-

In other words, you are saying that you lack experience/knowledge in the field. This does not make the proposal that complex. There are simpler solutions, however this one is not as complex as people are saying that it is.

It is not about expertise here, it is about time. Given two developers commanding same level of skill, A write a code and B want to make sure it is bug free and secure, the time it takes for B to validate the code will be much longer than the time that A spent on writing codes. Of course you can validate all the security holes of SW given enough time, but that will be months/years and we have not seen the code yet

You can make a poll to see how many people understand BIP101 and how many people understand SW

Actually I don't understand why Gavin showed so much positive attitude for SW and even push it as a hard fork, maybe because he knows it will fail, then people will run into his XT as he planned

[VeritasSapere]

I agree that what Satoshi suggests is strictly speaking irrelevant. I actually would prefer a more compromised solution as well, which is why I suggest starting BIP101 at 2MB. I would even support BIP100 or BIP103 like you mentioned. Though BIP101 presently seems politically the most practical, since we do need a single banner to rally under after all.

You have a great attitude, I can absolutely respect your position. I also just want what is best for Bitcoin and by extension the world. I want there to be increased adoption while maximizing decentralization and financial freedom. Thank you for not demonizing my position like many other people on this thread have done. I think the best outcome would be if we do both end up on the same chain. At least as users of Bitcoin when the split happens we will have coins in both chains, just hold on to them and we will both be winners no matter what happens.  

I do believe most XT supports have the best of intentions , including you, Gavin and Hearn. The difference in the opinions for the most part are overblown and superficial. Most core developers agree with raising the limit and always have agreed with raising the limit. One distinction I see is Gavin/Hearn appear to be of the opinion that we need to implement a simple and aggressive solution now and most of the other developers appear more conservative and are ok with hitting the blocklimit where fees start to increase before rolling out changes. In the past we have reached consensus with a critical hardfork overnight when problems arose, doing so now will be more difficult but if fees start creeping up to unreasonble levels and causing problems than the community will quickly come together again and take one of the tested and coded solutions to task. The changes being implemented like segwit will help other scalability solutions down the road so the worst case scenario is a 50/50 fork.... but i don't see that happening based upon the miner votes.  

True, though I do not think that Core will raise the limit significantly anytime soon, or at the very least I refuse to "trust" them to do this in the absence of any plan or code to hard fork, considering what is at stake.

I suppose I do see fundamental irreconcilable differences that are based on politics and economics, ideology essentially. This divide is not technical but political in nature. This is what gives me cause and justification for this split. I can see how possibly technically it can be argued that the differences between these two sides are not that great. For me however the political and economical differences are worlds apart, over time this has also grown to be more apparent. The fracturing of our community in terms of the forums and subredit is also a sign of this phenomena. I have at least found a new home on the bitco.in forum where like minded people like myself are gathering.

https://bitco.in/forum/threads/gold-collapsing-bitcoin-up.16/page-164#post-5620

[johnyj]

I suppose I do see fundamental irreconcilable differences that are based on politics and economics, ideology essentially. This divide is not technical but political in nature. This is what gives me cause and justification for this split. I can see how possibly technically it can be argued that the differences between the two sides are not that great. For me however the political and economical differences are worlds apart, over time this has also grown to be more apparent. The fracturing of our community in terms of the forums and subredit is also a sign of this phenomena. I have at least found a new home on the bitco.in forum where like minded people like myself are gathering.

True, the fundamental reason of a split always comes from politics and economics. That's why we should put enough effort to research user's behavior. You can see my signature to get some statistics I did, obviously majority of the users are using it to store value, that decided the major use case and the corresponding block size strategy


Bitcoin does not need to be spent constantly to maintain its value

[VeritasSapere]

I suppose I do see fundamental irreconcilable differences that are based on politics and economics, ideology essentially. This divide is not technical but political in nature. This is what gives me cause and justification for this split. I can see how possibly technically it can be argued that the differences between the two sides are not that great. For me however the political and economical differences are worlds apart, over time this has also grown to be more apparent. The fracturing of our community in terms of the forums and subredit is also a sign of this phenomena. I have at least found a new home on the bitco.in forum where like minded people like myself are gathering.

True, the fundamental reason of a split always comes from politics and economics. That's why we should put enough effort to research user's behavior. You can see my signature to get some statistics I did, obviously majority of the users are using it to store value, that decided the major use case and the corresponding block size strategy

Bitcoin does not need to be spent constantly to maintain its value
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1283729.0

Bitcoin derives much of its value from its utility, without this utility Bitcoin is definitely not as novel as a store of value like gold for instance, much of the present speculation is based on this. After all I can not sprinkle gold dust down the phone line and send it across the world cheaply in a matter of seconds like I can with Bitcoin. Bitcoin the currency and Bitcoin the commodity actually reinforce each other in a synergistic fashion.

[johnyj]

I suppose I do see fundamental irreconcilable differences that are based on politics and economics, ideology essentially. This divide is not technical but political in nature. This is what gives me cause and justification for this split. I can see how possibly technically it can be argued that the differences between the two sides are not that great. For me however the political and economical differences are worlds apart, over time this has also grown to be more apparent. The fracturing of our community in terms of the forums and subredit is also a sign of this phenomena. I have at least found a new home on the bitco.in forum where like minded people like myself are gathering.

True, the fundamental reason of a split always comes from politics and economics. That's why we should put enough effort to research user's behavior. You can see my signature to get some statistics I did, obviously majority of the users are using it to store value, that decided the major use case and the corresponding block size strategy

Bitcoin does not need to be spent constantly to maintain its value
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1283729.0

Bitcoin derives much of its value from its utility, without this utility Bitcoin is definitely not as novel as a store of value like gold for instance, much of the present speculation is based on this. After all I can not sprinkle gold dust down the phone line and send it across the world cheaply in a matter of seconds like I can with Bitcoin. Bitcoin the currency and Bitcoin the commodity actually reinforce each other in a synergistic fashion.

If you are talking about spending, most of my transaction in bitcoin already done between large institutions like web wallet and exchanges, I have not touched my client for a long time, simply because it's more convenient and secure to use web based services with 2FA enabled. Of course there is no FDIC for those institutions, but for coffee money, they are more than enough

Anyway you have to go to exchanges to convert to fiat money to spend, then why don't just directly use exchanges as your wallet? (In fact the world earliest banks evolved from exchanges) For merchants, being able to download a software and directly accept customer payment is great, but the consumer does not benefit from a light weight wallet at all due to all the security issues they have to manage

[HostFat]

When I heard yesterday that btcdrak was made a moderator of /r/btc, my first thoughts were "Maybe /r/Bitcoin finally has a bit of competition" and "I wonder how long that'll last". The answer: probably not very long. As someone (iCEBREAKER?) predicted, these people will just keep forking themselves into oblivion.

Getting the attitude on easily lying isn't a good achievement.

[VeritasSapere]

I suppose I do see fundamental irreconcilable differences that are based on politics and economics, ideology essentially. This divide is not technical but political in nature. This is what gives me cause and justification for this split. I can see how possibly technically it can be argued that the differences between the two sides are not that great. For me however the political and economical differences are worlds apart, over time this has also grown to be more apparent. The fracturing of our community in terms of the forums and subredit is also a sign of this phenomena. I have at least found a new home on the bitco.in forum where like minded people like myself are gathering.

True, the fundamental reason of a split always comes from politics and economics. That's why we should put enough effort to research user's behavior. You can see my signature to get some statistics I did, obviously majority of the users are using it to store value, that decided the major use case and the corresponding block size strategy

Bitcoin does not need to be spent constantly to maintain its value
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1283729.0

Bitcoin derives much of its value from its utility, without this utility Bitcoin is definitely not as novel as a store of value like gold for instance, much of the present speculation is based on this. After all I can not sprinkle gold dust down the phone line and send it across the world cheaply in a matter of seconds like I can with Bitcoin. Bitcoin the currency and Bitcoin the commodity actually reinforce each other in a synergistic fashion.

If you are talking about spending, most of my transaction in bitcoin already done between large institutions like web wallet and exchanges, I have not touched my client for a long time, simply because it's more convenient and secure to use web based services with 2FA enabled. Of course there is no FDIC for those institutions, but for coffee money, they are more than enough

Anyway you have to go to exchanges to convert to fiat money to spend, then why don't just directly use exchanges as your wallet? For merchants, being able to download a software and directly accept customer payment is great, but the consumer does not benefit from a light weight wallet at all due to all the security issues they have to manage

I guess I like to control my own private keys and use cold storage etc, you know be your own bank, the old Bitcoin philosophy.

I think the SPV wallets on smartphones like Airbitz and Mycelium are great for mass adoption. Easy to use and secure, while people still control their own private keys. I have not really sold much Bitcoin myself actually, except for exchanging it for goods and services directly. My hope is that one day we will not need to convert it back to Fiat at all, and one Bitcoin will be worth one Bitcoin.