The Bitcoin Foundation is TOXIC and must dissolve, plus a call to action

[99Percent]

My apologies for the length of this post, but I believe that it sums up what is broken with the Foundation, shows it is essentially unfixable, and includes at the end a call to action to form a new, democratically-constituted ...

Lost me here.

[justusranvier]

That's why bitcoiners need a tool / mechanism / website through which they can pay the developers for their work thus freeing them from soon-to-be-politically-involved TBF.

It exists.

[gweedo]

That's why bitcoiners need a tool / mechanism / website through which they can pay the developers for their work thus freeing them from soon-to-be-politically-involved TBF.

It exists.

https://www.gittip.com/ and the developer is trying to add bitcoins.

[Loozik]

That's why bitcoiners need a tool / mechanism / website through which they can pay the developers for their work thus freeing them from soon-to-be-politically-involved TBF.

It exists.

https://www.gittip.com/ and the developer is trying to add bitcoins.

Is it this? https://www.gittip.com/for/bitrix/

[gweedo]

That's why bitcoiners need a tool / mechanism / website through which they can pay the developers for their work thus freeing them from soon-to-be-politically-involved TBF.

It exists.

https://www.gittip.com/ and the developer is trying to add bitcoins.

Is it this? https://www.gittip.com/for/bitrix/

That is a gittip community, but if you want to tip Gavin, or any other core developer get their github name and you can tip them.

[Loozik]

That is a gittip community, but if you want to tip Gavin, or any other core developer get their github name and you can tip them.

1. Okay, It is my understanding that I can pay Gavin, Jeff Garzik, John Smith and others using gittip.com, right?

2. But these guys may work on features and the type of development I am not interested to support, e.g. they may work at the moment on features that MtGox or Bitpay is interested in - just like TBF may be working on things I do not like, e.g. hiring a lobbyist; why should then I donate to TBF?

3. Where do I find a list of all developers with a list of features each of the dev is working on, so that I could donate to the feature I particularily want or like (thus supporting a particular developer)?

[gweedo]

That is a gittip community, but if you want to tip Gavin, or any other core developer get their github name and you can tip them.

1. Okay, It is my understanding that I can pay Gavin, Jeff Garzik, John Smith and others using gittip.com, right?

2. But these guys may work on features and the type of development I am not interested to support, e.g. they may work at the moment on features that MtGox or Bitpay is interested in? - just like TBF may be working on things I do not like, e.g. hiring a lobbyst; why shouls then I donate to TBF?

3. Where do I find a list of all developers with a list of features each of the dev is working on, so that I could donate to the feature I particularily want or like (thus supporting a particular developer)?

1) Correct

2) If you don't like it don't donate, that is why I am not donating, I don't like the foundation's view and where it is going

3) I would just post on the forum, or pm the developers directly then after the feature is created then donated, but Gavin holds the ability to accept features, so even if the developer creates the feature, it probably won't make it to the client unless Gavin says it should be in it.

[Loozik]

3) I would just post on the forum, or pm the developers directly then after the feature is created then donated, but Gavin holds the ability to accept features, so even if the developer creates the feature, it probably won't make it to the client unless Gavin says it should be in it.

You see the problem is none of the features I am aware they are working on https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/issues?labels=Feature&milestone=&page=1&state=open is of interest to me (like ''address book cannot be searched'' - this is a feature for business users who have many addresses); I consider them trivial and non-important for retail users.

It is in the best interest of the developers to:
a) make a list of sensible features for retail users
b) add prices to these features
c) add ''donate'' buton to github website (or a new Bitcoin project development website) so that bitcoiners can donate to a particular feature / pay for a particular feature.

If a - c is done then retail users can compete on the market with business users over developers, i.e. over where development effort is put.

If a - c is done then developers will get some money for their services. My understanding is that TBF does not pay them (except for Gavin) and they do a charitable work.

[ktttn]

Can someone with the authority do so clarify the motivation for the lobbying/interactions with regulators and the potential end results?

Is the protocol up for debate? Will development be guided away from certain less marketable ideas such as stronger anonymity (various coin-mixing)? Is transaction filtering a possibility?

Perhaps if the goal and methods were more clearly outlined, there would be less backlash, or at the very least the backlash would be more informed.

hey... wanna see something cool?
*whipping out brown paper bag*
See that thing in there? Its my authority...
So dig this:
I want to send anyone to everywhere to convince whoever to start using and mining bitcoin.
I want to send lawyers and lobbyists to DC to convince politicians to start using and mining bitcoin.
Y'all remember how christism was instituted, right? Constantine, yo. If not the foundation, then who? If they can't beat us, they'll join us.
Opinions?

[wumpus]

is of interest to me (like ''address book cannot be searched'' - this is a feature for business users who have many addresses); I consider them trivial and non-important for retail users.

I'm kind of surprised that between 377(!) open issues there is not one that seems important to you.
Why not make one then?
Then people could use gittip (or bitcoinbounties.com) or whatever to contribute to it, and you could test out your experiment on the cheap.

[Loozik]

I'm kind of surprised that between 377(!) open issues there is not one that seems important to you.

There are 23 open feature requests https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/issues?labels=Feature&milestone=&page=1&state=open None of them interests me. Really.

Why not make one then?

Language barrier (my English is poor) + knowledge barrier (a newbie and a non-techie).

Then people could use gittip (or bitcoinbounties.com) or whatever to contribute to it, and you could test out your experiment on the cheap.

1. There should be one project development website*. On this website retail users and business users compete with their money for the Bitcoin developers' resources.

2. The website should have built-in crowd financing mechanism. This crowd financing mechanism will be mostly used by retail users, but I can imagine that in case of complex and pricey features (more than $100k) businesses can join forces and use it too.

3. The website should work like this:
a) People / businesses submit their feature requests like in this project management site http://www.multicharts.com/pm/ (loads slowly).
b) Then developers put a price tag for requests they can handle + specify time they agree to complete the task.
c) Then people / businesses commit to pay the whole price (it will take a week or two if the feature is desired or years if the feature is unwanted)
d) When 100% of the price from the price tag is paid to a particular developer's address, the developer starts coding.
e) The feature is added to Bitcoin-Qt (e.g. documentation) after reviewing by other developers in context of safety.

Additional mechanisms can be added like holding some of the devs salary in escrow for a certain period of time for possible bug fixing.

Bitcoin miners jointly dispose of computer power greater than 500 top computers in the world. Bitcoin users dispose of cash (to be used for project development) greater than what you can get from MtGox, Bitpay and other businesses. You simply need to build the auction tool to let this cash flow to the developers.

* having one website = one username + all issues and feature requests in one place + easy management, like sorting issues, deleting doubling feature requests, etc. (no need to jump from bitcoinbounties to gitthyub to gittip, etc. - I do not imagine 1000 people doing all this acrobatics to donate 1 or 2 bitcoins for a small feature).

[wumpus]

You shouldn't just look at the feature requests but the other issues as well. Not all are labeled properly (yes, no one is paid to do that either).

In any case you're kind of confirming Gavin's feeling: the non-sexy issues that badly need to be fixed would not get funded, as they're not as interesting in a casual glance by someone non-technical.

And *that's* what funding is needed for: Autotesters, small friendlyness improvements (like choosing the block chain location), robustness, fixing bugs and annoyances. That's the kind of issues that currently hardly receive attention from developers because they're not fun or even very challenging to implement. That's where an incentive is needed.

[Loozik]

In any case you're kind of confirming Gavin's feeling: the non-sexy issues that badly need to be fixed would not get funded, as they're not as interesting in a casual glance by someone non-technical.

John,

1. Are these non-sexy issues fixed now for free? If yes then, they will continue to be fixed for free in the future as well (by this kind soul). If these non-sexy issues are not being fixed now, then nothing would change, if you started being paid for sexy features (except you would be better off).

2. I will post a layout of the project management website today (a basic idea).

3. BTW, I do not think that people will start massively flooding you with sexy and nonsensical feature requests. If people must back their requests with their hard earned real money - trust me - the request will be well thought and sense-making.

[Impaler]

You folks are so full of fail, your such radical libertarians you'd be more accurately called anarchists and the BTC foundation shows exactly why anarchists always fail.  When you attack ALL authority as illegitimate you inevitably get a dictatorship of the wealthy elites who end up being worse then democracy because they have no pretense of representing anyone but themselves.  In the BTC-verse that means Mt.Gox for the time being but gradually it will be people like those Winkli-twin douches and then the very same 'Bankers' you claim to hate. 

You anarchist morons ARE THEIR BEST FRIENDS as your handing them BTC on a silver platter.  Real merchants can see that you offer them nothing, so they fall into the arms of any half-decent cartel that offers to create an environment in which the merchant can do business.  The OP should look at himself for why leadership of BTC is moving away from people like him, because he and his ilk have refused to take up that leadership.

[wumpus]

1. Are these non-sexy issues fixed now for free? If yes then, they will continue to be fixed for free in the future as well (by this kind soul). If these non-sexy issues are not being fixed now, then nothing would change, if you started being paid for sexy features (except you would be better off).

No, they're not fixed right now. That's what people are complaining about; see for example.

http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1eb1dg/bitcoinqt_should_have_a_way_to_choose_blockchain/

And I can't speak for the other developers but at least I am tired of doing work for free.

Another example would be "sweep private key" (to redeem paper wallets etc without polluting the wallet with potentially untrusted private keys).

Or a wizard/help system to guide people through setup, shows help bubbles on first use, etc.

Basically, things that developers and advanced users don't need because they can McGyver-rig something to do the job anyway.

"sexy issues" are things like multi-wallet support, HD wallets, coin control patches, etc. Hard, very high impact, but also very hard to test properly and thus get integrated. Developers may work on them for free just for the challenge and developer cred. You can add financial incentives as you want to these, but that won't necessarily help them get integrated faster because the bottleneck is testing/code review.

2. I will post a layout of the project management website today (a basic idea).

Ok, cool

3. BTW, I do not think that people will start massively flooding you with sexy and nonsensical feature requests. If people must back their requests with their hard earned real money - trust me - the request will be well thought and sense-making.

You have a point there.

[jubalix]

My apologies for the length of this post, but I believe that it sums up what is broken with the Foundation, shows it is essentially unfixable, and includes at the end a call to action to form a new, democratically-constituted umbrella organization for the advancement and defense of cryptocurrencies, Bitcoin first and foremost among them. I also believe you will find it valuable reading, if you're not already closely familiar with the matters at hand.

"Outgoing" Bitcoin Foundation Executive Director Peter Vessenes, aka "vess" here, @vessenes on Twitter, states in video from Bitcoin 2013 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=I6jfPXFAToM) at 5:23 that the Foundation will be hiring a lawyer to lobby regulators in Washington DC:

https://twitter.com/mikegogulski/status/335820053926797312

As I wrote:

#BitcoinFoundation is DEAD TO ME. Lobbyists? Fuck you @Vessenes shyster sellout! Give my BTC 25 back! http://ow.ly/lai8e  #Bitcoin2013

Then:

Is that why you sold me http://app.bitlaundry.com/  @vessenes? So you could look squeaky clean while cozying up to politicians?#Bitcoin2013  (https://twitter.com/mikegogulski/status/335822417400324097)

And:

I got into #Bitcoin to improve this miserable planet and ESCAPE the iron grip of privileged moneyed interests, not JOIN THEM! #Bitcoin2013

And:

And @Vessenes sues @MtGox for $75m. Send the king's swordsmen! I need more money! #Bitcoin2013 #Bitcoin #betrayal #rat #statist #sellout

Plenty more follows in my tweet stream, and includes a conversation with Smári McCarthy of the International (formerly Icelandic) Modern Media Institute (http://www.immi.is/).

I provided more of my reasoning (after a nice barbiturates-and-vodka cocktail and a bit of sleep) on Google+, in comments on Declan McCullagh's article (http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-57585151-38/winklevoss-twins-on-bitcoin-time-to-work-with-the-feds/) from today:

TL;DR: Sending Bitcoin to DC is like sending My Little Pony to the veterinarian.

+Jon Matonis Despite my rantings, for me it's not about purity either, but about the Foundation running off in a direction starkly counter to the motivations of a good many members, without any consultation at all. I believe I also heard +Peter Vessenes say, in that opening pitch, that there would be a Bitcoin Foundation members' meeting during the conference. I guess that means that I'll be getting an invitation with a teleconference number soon(?).

+Jerry Brito and +Declan McCullagh Yes, the exchanges are a vulnerable point, almost a "systempunkt" in John Robb's terminology, the resiliency of the underlying protocol aside. At the same time, it's already widely recognized that the best solutions to that sort of risk in the Bitcoin ecosystem involve peer-to-peer fiat/BTC exchange on the lines of #bitcoin-otc, localbitcoins.com and/or some kind of price discovery and exchange mechanism, with market actor reputation tracking, working in distributed fashion either in the BTC blockchain itself or as part of some kind of complementary system based roughly on the same principles. It's into those kinds of solutions that I'd like to see funding from whatever replaces the now toxic Bitcoin foundation and where I'd like to see the massive amounts of human energy that will otherwise be sucked into the interdimensional tentacle-monster maelstrom of KYC/AML/FinCEN/FATF/make-it-play-in-Peoria compliance (vendor AND customer side) spent.

As +Nick Weaver alludes to, Bitcoin really is fundamentally incompatible with the pharaonic pyramids of the legacy banking system, or, in my parting words from last night, sending Bitcoin to DC is like sending My Little Pony to the veterinarian. Even though we lot on this thread may share similar ideas about the ideal end state for Bitcoin, I think we all agree that the means to reach those ends are important as well. There is clear disagreement about what sorts of means are the most efficient in bringing us all to shiny happy crypto-ponycoin utopia, and that's fine. I'm asking folks to consider the entire picture very carefully, and especially not with America-centric blinders on.

I could go on to complain (but won't do so here, hehe) that the Bitcoin core dev team -- and, by extension, the Foundation which pays +Gavin Andresen -- are, in my opinion, spending a disproportionate amount of time/energy on work which primarily benefits a small number of mining pool operators (taken collectively, another systempunkt!) and on work which tends more and more to support centralized and institutionalized structures such as BitPay and BitInstant -- with all due respect to those teams -- and to toward the deprioritization of work support independent merchants and the actual peer-to-peer future. Perhaps this is simply a disagreement regarding how to sequence priorities, but I can't help but think it points to the same sort of issues I mention above, which actually turn out to be key ones as indicated by others.

+Jerry Brito "Allowed" is a hobgoblin. Bitcoin doesn't need permission from the existing state/corporate financial system. In fact, it presents an existential threat to both. Fine, though, send some "diplomats" out to spread confusion in the enemy's ranks.

And to +Jeffrey Tucker, it is indeed sad that freedom itself is simply unthinkable, where in a proper society it would be the reflexive, unconsidered default posture and where that society would react swiftly and forcefully to deviations from its principles. Alas, even with several thousand years of thought and experience to guide us, we have not yet collectively made the freedom posture the default.

(https://plus.google.com/u/1/112961607570158342254/posts/YLe37k7vonQ)

CLEARLY, Bitcoin no longer needs the Bitcoin Foundation as it's currently constituted, and it is probably too toxic to be salvaged in any form. The conflicts of interest among directors should make this perfectly clear. Plus, we now have Vessenes suing Karpeles over the MtGox/Coinlab deal while they are both on the same board. They both should have resigned immediately at the time the suit was filed and served.

Even worse, and utterly inexcusably, Peter Vessenes hired Patrick Murck as the Foundation's general counsel. This of course is the very same Patrick Murck who serves as Coinlab's General Counsel, and who is therefore Coinlab's top litigator in the suit against MtGox.

And, worse still, this is yet the same Patrick Murck who drew up the Coinlab/Bitcoinica/Bitcoin Consultancy deal which turned into such a massive clusterfuck that exactly none of the players involved emerged in any other manner than smeared with shit from head to toe. (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=196150.0;all)

Note also that NONE of these highly controversial acts and omissions were placed before votes of the Foundation's membership, in radical contravention of the founding spirit of the organization if not the language of its founding charter.

THUS, IMHO, and as a Foundation Life Member, I hereby move that the Foundation dissolve itself, immediately, and enter into a binding legal plan to reimburse all donors proportionately, once legitimate expenses and outstanding debt incurred to date is covered. Additionally, I move that the Foundation immediately terminate all relations with Peter Vessenes, Mark Karpeles (sorry, dude) and Patrick Murck, and that Jon Matonis be appointed interim Executive Director, to serve during the company's receivership and through it's final dissolution as a legal entity.

And I am ready to support a new organization which actually serves the interests of Bitcoin (and other cryptocurrencies, as appropriate), with such egregious conflicts of interest excluded from decision-taking power and with a broad umbrella missing to accommodate ALL of the Bitcoin community, not just those who are only too delighted to cuddle up to regulators and politicians on the little-guy donor's coin. The new organization shall operate democratically from day zero. I move that Jon Matonis be named custodian of founding donations and that he shall serve, once and only once, as Chairman of the founding, general meeting of the entire membership, at which a full charter and a full set of by-laws shall be adopted and a new slate of directors and executives elected, such meeting to be held not less than 60 days from now and not less than 120 days from now, and to include the technical capacity for as many voices as possible to participate and be heard (that is founding-donors-only google hangout, IRC channel, toll-free teleconference linked to a skype teleconference, etc.).

Who's with me?

I just don't see the point let the foundation do whatever they want.

Just start your own Bitcoin foundation

[willphase]

I just don't see the point let the foundation do whatever they want.

Just start your own Bitcoin foundation

Will

[Loozik]

When you attack ALL authority as illegitimate you inevitably get a dictatorship of the wealthy elites who end up being worse then democracy because they have no pretense of representing anyone but themselves.

I would argue democracy is a form of dictatorship (by a voting majority).

In the BTC-verse that means Mt.Gox for the time being but gradually it will be people like those Winkli-twin douches and then the very same 'Bankers' you claim to hate. 

Do you think this is the right thread to put insults?

[Impaler]

When you attack ALL authority as illegitimate you inevitably get a dictatorship of the wealthy elites who end up being worse then democracy because they have no pretense of representing anyone but themselves.

I would argue democracy is a form of dictatorship (by a voting majority).

Well besides the fact that all modern democracies are constitutionally mandated to protect minority rights your point is without much substance because your just arguing that everything is dictatorship.  As I demonstrated that anarchy is as silly, stupid and impossible as state as communism is you can't denigrate democracy by comparing it to a non-existent ideal.  So now your just saying you want a narrow 1% dictatorship rather then a 51% dictatorship, I'd take the latter any day of the week thank you very much.

In the BTC-verse that means Mt.Gox for the time being but gradually it will be people like those Winkli-twin douches and then the very same 'Bankers' you claim to hate.  

Do you think this is the right thread to put insults?

I site them primarily as an example of emerging class of people who take existing wealth distribution advantages and 'move' their dominance into BTC.  The whole premise that BTC can some how overthrow existing power structures is flawed because existing power structure just moves in to the vacuum.  As for the twins anyone with half a brain can tell these guys are douches, I find it pathetic that anyone would have them as speakers.

[Loozik]

And I can't speak for the other developers but at least I am tired of doing work for free.

Then you and probably other developers are not very happy to see announcements of using TBF's stretched resources to hire a lobbyist / involve in politics instead of paying developers, are you? Below is a solution - just a rough idea.





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