How to end the "BTC Civil War" before it gets worse?

[LibraryAnn]

The Bitcoin community is deeply divided
Transactions take too long
fees are way too high
no real end in sight.

Note: This topic is about Peace not War.
Seriously, how to end the "BTC Civil War" before it gets worse?

[OmegaStarScream]

The reason we are in this situation is because the people who claim they are supporting Satoshi vision only care about controlling bitcoin even though they have enough money to simply not care, as soon as BCH came to life, we started to see more useless forks each few weeks. There are a lot of things that currently need development such as Schnorr, TumbleBit, MAST, LN etc. so instead of putting efforts into destroying bitcoin, they could've put their knowledge into something more useful.

If also services such as Coinbase stop saying nonsense like 'our users didn't request SegWit', that would be nice. If they only implement it, It would help the network and also help them save millions of dollars in fees for the long term but they are clearly colluding to bring bitcoin down.

[coin-investor]

The reason we are in this situation is because the people who claim they are supporting Satoshi vision only care about controlling bitcoin even though they have enough money to simply not care, as soon as BCH came to life, we started to see more useless forks each few weeks. There are a lot of things that currently need development such as Schnorr, TumbleBit, MAST, LN etc. so instead of putting efforts into destroying bitcoin, they could've put their knowledge into something more useful.

If also services such as Coinbase stop saying nonsense like 'our users didn't request SegWit', that would be nice. If they only implement it, It would help the network and also help them save millions of dollars in fees for the long term but they are clearly colluding to bring bitcoin down.

I totally agree people used to get excited about fork because it means free money for bitcoin holders, but with so many fork coming every fork challenge the supremacy of the original one and this is not good for the community.

[eternalgloom]

The reason we are in this situation is because the people who claim they are supporting Satoshi vision only care about controlling bitcoin even though they have enough money to simply not care, as soon as BCH came to life, we started to see more useless forks each few weeks. There are a lot of things that currently need development such as Schnorr, TumbleBit, MAST, LN etc. so instead of putting efforts into destroying bitcoin, they could've put their knowledge into something more useful.

If also services such as Coinbase stop saying nonsense like 'our users didn't request SegWit', that would be nice. If they only implement it, It would help the network and also help them save millions of dollars in fees for the long term but they are clearly colluding to bring bitcoin down.

Yeah, the first thing the community should focus on is getting segwit adoption growing...
If everyone started using segwit, the mempool would significantly reduce in size and everyone would benefit from it.

I'm already trying to use my segwit address as much as possible and I definitely notice a difference in how much fees I'm paying.

Schnorr signatures are the next step IMO, together with segwit they would mean a very significant reduction in transaction sizes.
Does anyone know how far along the development of that is? Or where I can follow development?

[DarkStar_]

The reason we are in this situation is because the people who claim they are supporting Satoshi vision only care about controlling bitcoin even though they have enough money to simply not care, as soon as BCH came to life, we started to see more useless forks each few weeks. There are a lot of things that currently need development such as Schnorr, TumbleBit, MAST, LN etc. so instead of putting efforts into destroying bitcoin, they could've put their knowledge into something more useful.

If also services such as Coinbase stop saying nonsense like 'our users didn't request SegWit', that would be nice. If they only implement it, It would help the network and also help them save millions of dollars in fees for the long term but they are clearly colluding to bring bitcoin down.

Yeah, the first thing the community should focus on is getting segwit adoption growing...
If everyone started using segwit, the mempool would significantly reduce in size and everyone would benefit from it.

I'm already trying to use my segwit address as much as possible and I definitely notice a difference in how much fees I'm paying.

Schnorr signatures are the next step IMO, together with segwit they would mean a very significant reduction in transaction sizes.
Does anyone know how far along the development of that is? Or where I can follow development?

I'm not quite sure how far along developement is for Schnorr signatures, but I think a much better improvement is the Lightning Network for the long run. Decreases in transaction sizes are good, but it's only a small, temporary solution. Take a closer look into LN if you haven't already, as it's been tested on the testnet for quite some time now, started to be tested on the mainnet, and VPN provider TorGuard[1] started accepting Lightning transactions.

[1] https://twitter.com/TorGuard/status/950383059735646209

[Black_bl]

The reason we are in this situation is because the people who claim they are supporting Satoshi vision only care about controlling bitcoin even though they have enough money to simply not care, as soon as BCH came to life, we started to see more useless forks each few weeks. There are a lot of things that currently need development such as Schnorr, TumbleBit, MAST, LN etc. so instead of putting efforts into destroying bitcoin, they could've put their knowledge into something more useful.

If also services such as Coinbase stop saying nonsense like 'our users didn't request SegWit', that would be nice. If they only implement it, It would help the network and also help them save millions of dollars in fees for the long term but they are clearly colluding to bring bitcoin down.

You're right buddy, but I think that Bitcoin lost too much. Bitcoin had a huge advantage a few years ago - Bitcoin had accepted merchants we really pay using Bitcoin, maybe one could argue that this is not important, but not me. I think this adoption amongst people and merchants was very important to push Bitcoin further, however, Bitcoin has stucked and now it's only about who create the biggest profit, what a pitty. If we were time travellers we could change it, but we all should admitt, Bitcoin failed in currently form

[sprinkles]

I am confident that Bitcoin will scale in the right way given time. But people can be quite impatient.
It's just a shame that new people coming in to the space are witnessing the high fees that we are currently experiencing and are much more interested in the latest shiny new crypto rather than the truly decentralised system that is Bitcoin.

[Stedsm]

The reason we are in this situation is because the people who claim they are supporting Satoshi vision only care about controlling bitcoin even though they have enough money to simply not care, as soon as BCH came to life, we started to see more useless forks each few weeks. There are a lot of things that currently need development such as Schnorr, TumbleBit, MAST, LN etc. so instead of putting efforts into destroying bitcoin, they could've put their knowledge into something more useful.

If also services such as Coinbase stop saying nonsense like 'our users didn't request SegWit', that would be nice. If they only implement it, It would help the network and also help them save millions of dollars in fees for the long term but they are clearly colluding to bring bitcoin down.

Is it not possible for these developers to come ahead with a different sight? Like a blockchain summit or something? Use their knowledge, not to argue, but to decide one thing for all, upgrade just once and prove their work without debating too much? It's these exchanges and other major parts too who are doing bullshit at their end, by not accepting these upgrades or misleading people about the changes already accepted by people.

[Ch1bi]

From what I've read, the developers of Bitcoin was aware the current issues we're having now years ago. It's just upsetting that because of the back and forth between the developers, and we get caught in the middle. I really do think if the current situation doesn't improve Bitcoin will stagnate.

I know Lightning is supposed to be a solution to the high fees but who knows when that will be implemented. I believe this "civil war" could all end if both sides could agree on what's best for the users of Bitcoin / ecosystem in general.

[ChipMixer]

The Bitcoin community is deeply divided

It is important to define how it is divided. In my opinion there are people that wants to use Bitcoin (users) and people that wants to sell Bitcoin for a lot of cash (holders). Both groups wants different things or sometimes same things for different reasons.

Low mining fees
Both users and holders want it because nobody wants to pay too much.
Users wants it more because they pay it multiple times.
Holders does not care that much - they need to move it to an exchange once in a while. And they usually cheap out on mining fee.

Lightning Network
Both users and holders want it.
Users want it for micropayments.
Holders want it for good news and reason for BTC price to go higher.

Big blocks
Holders want it more than users.
Big blocks lower mining fees while making running node more expensive. Holders rarely run a node.

Segwit
(Almost) nobody understands what it is.
Users believe it will lower mining fees.
Holders believe it will raise the price.

Privacy
Some users wants privacy.
Most of holders does not care about privacy.

Fiat-BTC exchange
Both users and holders wants it.
Users likes fiat exchanges because it allows merchants to know value of BTC.
Holders likes fiat exchanges because they increase the price.

Crypto-only exchanges
Users does not care.
Holders use them to speculate on price. They do not care which asset "goes to moon". As long as their virtual account is values higher - they are happy.

Online wallets
This is interesting and weird.
Users do not trust them and have no reason to use them.
Holders use online wallet because they brought Bitcoins there. They also prefer keeping altcoins in online wallet / exchange because they... do not care what they brought. They cannot be asked to download and install wallet of their price-skyrocketting coin.

Based on this analysis I believe there is no war here. As a user I do not see why we should care about holders. They will come and go. They will say a lot of things and none of that matters. They have no reason to fight users.

[Xylber]

The reason we are in this situation is because the people who claim they are supporting Satoshi vision only care about controlling bitcoin even though they have enough money to simply not care

I agree, Bitcoin became a business for some, and business always call for parasites:

- There is people who support Satoshi's vision of a free and decentralized currency.
- There is people who only care about the money they can make, it does not matter if they have to buy BTC, LTC, trashcoin, bubblecoin, or stones of the garden of the grandma. They will support BTC as long as they can make money.
- There is people who see their business, power and control, negatively affected by a decentralized currency: bankers, credit cards, goverments.


People with different interests always will create wars. We must agree that, for the welfare of everybody, the cryptocurrency economy must to be fair for everybody, in my opinion, decentralized.

[YarkoL]

Big blocks
Holders want it more than users.
Big blocks lower mining fees while making running node more expensive. Holders rarely run a node.

It's the other way round.

Holders are ok with small blocks because of the "anti-censorship" that comes with
the ability to run a full node with limited resources, which is made possible by
the smaller amount of transactions in smaller blocks.

Users - i.e. people who would like to actually buy things with bitcoin - would benefit
from bigger blocks, smaller transaction fees and faster processing of orders.

[bluefirecorp_]

Hmm, civil war? That's a laugh.

It's crazy how centralized Bitcoin actually is already.

A very tiny fraction of people make most of the choice for the majority currently. It's more like here's several superpower like entities all deciding the fate of this cryptocurrency.

[YarkoL]

It's crazy how centralized Bitcoin actually is already.

Well it is dominated by power bases, each with a different degrees of centralization/decentralization.
Devs, Miners, FullNodes - although you might think of other names.

Is that a centralization? Then I think every crypto, despite the ideological claptrap
is centralized to a degree, must be, and we might as well be thinking in terms of different
levels of centralization/decentralization that might very well be caused by some immutable
constraints.

[dado7]

As with every system there is a problem of centralisation, and as we all know - there is a problem of scaling.

Basically a fork of some sort that would adopt two things at the same time could do the trick, although it is a long stretch (fighting against human nature always is, and it is simply used to centralisation.... well maybe it is not just the human thing - every herd has it's leader...):

1. Adoption of great ideas coming from altcoins - about scaling, fees, smart contracts, security etc.
2. Joining with some other community and promoting a sort of equality system. For beginning - the community could limit the maximum amount of Bitcoin that one individual could be having. I am not saying it is a good idea because we are : a. ways past socialism, communism and similar ideas, b. it would be technically almost impossible to check if some individual is not in possession of a dozen of different wallets etc. c. it would destroy the idea of annonimity.  But, what I am saying is that there should be something like this involved/adopted. Only something really revolutionising could take people's notice, and finally getting rid of centralisation in a true sense would do that, at least it would for me.

[TheReverseTrader]

I see this as a free market where people decide what they want to support. I've seen many people who likes BCH and think it will ge great one day... I prefer BTC... I dont see it as a war, but like a ''democracy'' where people buy and your money is like a vote that says ''please, keep going with your job.''

Let people fork btc as much they want. Everyone should be free to do whatelse they want. These scam coins will not go anywhere, unless they really develop something userfull.

[krigger]

You cannot end it. The fork has happened and the two coins have gone their seperate ways.

[Hedda Gabler]

The reason we are in this situation is because the people who claim they are supporting Satoshi vision only care about controlling bitcoin even though they have enough money to simply not care, as soon as BCH came to life, we started to see more useless forks each few weeks. There are a lot of things that currently need development such as Schnorr, TumbleBit, MAST, LN etc. so instead of putting efforts into destroying bitcoin, they could've put their knowledge into something more useful.

If also services such as Coinbase stop saying nonsense like 'our users didn't request SegWit', that would be nice. If they only implement it, It would help the network and also help them save millions of dollars in fees for the long term but they are clearly colluding to bring bitcoin down.

Coinbase is either technically incompetent that they do not understand how to fork the technology.
Or they are scam artists and forked it, but kept all the money to themselves.

[zac2013]

The simple way to end the civil war is to introduce cheap transactions fees as soon as possible.

The entire crypto market needs Bitcoin to do well.

If users can actually use Bitcoin (without feeling like they are getting ripped off) then all the other bs & forks becomes irrelevant.

If i was new and just bought my first amount of Bitcoin on localbitcoins.com then put it into purse.io to buy some discounted stuff from Amazon, then i would currently be buying at a higher price than Amazon (with fees added). It's messing everything up, this is just one example of how it's not working.

I don't want to have to change my Bitcoin for eth or limit my usage just so i can use it.

Cheap fees, so that it becomes functional again to new users is all that's required.

[dado7]

Cheap fees, so that it becomes functional again to new users is all that's required.

I don't think it is just about the fees. The scalability problem is also about time needed to process the transactions, which I think you should agree is equally important.

Another two things that need to be addresses are volatility and security. Volatility cannot be dealt with, it will come with the maturity of the market.
But the security is indeed the main issue at the moment and it is the most difficult problem to be dealt with as one community cannot by themselves control third-party applications and web pages.