Mike Hearn Leaves Bitcoin

[mpoletiek]

This might be an ill-informed question, but I came across this recently and was wondering how we feel about BTC upgrades/improvements?

It feels like BTC is now chasing fiat gains over building a global p2p economy, hoping that lightning network or some other L2 solves the scaling problems for non-custodial transactions.

https://blog.plan99.net/the-resolution-of-the-bitcoin-experiment-dabb30201f7

[Upgrade00]

LN solving scalability issues is directly correlated with Bitcoin as a P2P economy since it needs transactions to be affordable making it easier to transfer between peers with less anoying network clogs.

I agree that we need more decentralized products to boost the network, but we are far from chasing fiat gains, at least not at the protocol level.

[seoincorporation]

.
I agree that we need more decentralized products to boost the network, but we are far from chasing fiat gains, at least not at the protocol level.

This is true, bitcoin isn't focused on chasing fiat Gains, it already has a 1 Trillion markets cap, it already has the fiat. And I don't see bitcoin centraliced at all, the autority distribution has been a success, that mean no one can take desicions alone about the future of the coin or any change on the blockchain.

[franky1]

seem some ill informed people are using this topic to promote a completely different network that is trying to steal users, fame and integrity of bitcoin, whilst not actually having any of the security elements of bitcoin

LN is a completely different network. if you analyse it you will notice:
its does not have a blockchain.
nor is it fixed to only support and work with bitcoin
its payments are not even measured in sats but produce onion packets(payments) measured in msats which is a currency unit bitcoin does NOT understand
to use LN you are abandoning using bitcoin.
your payments are not settled(confirmed)
mining pools do not collect fees when doing LN Msat payments
the flaws of LN are a known risk to users funds
the flaws do not guarantee users will get settled amounts they are shown to be owed whilst in LN
the flaws allow funds to be stolen

if bitcoin was a debit account of real value, LN is the credit card of iou funds which can leave people in debt(loss)

LN is not the solution to scaling bitcoin because its actually an attempt to steal people away from using bitcoin. to scale bitcoin is meant to scale bitcoin to allow more transactions on bitcoin and allow more ability for people to use bitcoin.

dont be fooled into thinking LN is the better version of bitcoin. everyone knows how the fiat system failed the public due to the debt system mainly caused by credit cards.. so LN is repeating this error. dont get stuck in LN. instead ask core (centralised group of bitcoin) to do better for bitcoin by scaling bitcoin, not their sponsored subnetwork they wish to push people over to

[thecodebear]

This might be an ill-informed question, but I came across this recently and was wondering how we feel about BTC upgrades/improvements?

It feels like BTC is now chasing fiat gains over building a global p2p economy, hoping that lightning network or some other L2 solves the scaling problems for non-custodial transactions.

https://blog.plan99.net/the-resolution-of-the-bitcoin-experiment-dabb30201f7

That post was from 2016. Needless to say, that post was wrong. Bitcoin is still here and growing and thriving. It didn't fail. It is continuing its path to becoming the humanity's alternate currency.

And of course we are looking to L2 for scaling, that's the only way to scale a decentralized system.

[Alpha Marine]

He abandoned Bitcoin in 2016, sold all his Bitcoin and washed his hands off it, whose loss is that? As of 2016, he said Bitcoin was dead and there was no future for it, well 8 years later here it is, still changing lives and growing strong so he was obviously wrong.
He did raise some concerns like network fees and a few other things, but none of those things led to the fact that the "experiment" which is Bitcoin has failed.
It's true that Bitcoin was created to be a decentralised currency which should be a global means of payment, but things have hindered it aside from network fees. Also, most of the reasons he gave as to why a person won't want to use Bitcoin as a means of payment are false.     

[Helena Yu]

Today you can send your coins with 3sat/vbyte and it will be confirmed probably a hour, why you need to looking for other option?

That post was from 2016. Needless to say, that post was wrong. Bitcoin is still here and growing and thriving. It didn't fail. It is continuing its path to becoming the humanity's alternate currency.

Yep, that was when Bitcoin worth less than $1K and most people are still doubting Bitcoin.

Even after Bitcoin made new ATH in 2017/2018, people are still doubting Bitcoin because they said Bitcoin will be Tulip 2.0.

But, after Bitcoin can made new ATH in 2021 and now Bitcoin again made new ATH in this year, there are no more Tulip 2.0/bubble FUD anymore, the market is already strong enough.

[franky1]

And of course we are looking to L2 for scaling, that's the only way to scale a decentralized system.

to scale visacard you dont offer american express

offering an alternative network is not even close to being similar to a "scaling solution" for a main network..
especially if that other alternative network is not as strong, secure, viable

LN has had 7 years and yet only encapsulates ~5000btc.
most of that is not a case of millions of users of 0.0005btc
its actually of centralised services reserve swapping their own value between each other

when there is active btc moving of hundreds of thousands of coins on the bitcoin network and has a 19m cap right now.
but LN only has 5000cap and the payment events seen between popular channels is not hundreds of thousands of coins
it shows LN is not even putting a 0.001% dent in the utility of bitcoin

[FinneysTrueVision]

The users might be chasing fiat gains but that’s not what motivates Bitcoin’s developers. It could be argued that this was the motivation for Mike Hearn, who worked in enterprise blockchain development after quitting Bitcoin. Like Hearn’s scaling proposals for Bitcoin, enterprise blockchain turned out to be a failure.

Hearn’s solution for scaling was to simply increase the blocksize, which wasn’t the most effective approach. It didn’t help that these big blockers embraced guys like Craig Wright and Calvin Ayre. The dysfunction and a lack of a competent scaling proposal is why that side failed to change Bitcoin.

Currently there are proposals for covenants and rollups, which won’t be a permanent fix, but they do offer considerable improvements in scalability. 

[anarkiboy]

More recently, some major developer of LN has resigned as well due to unfixable nature of it, he told that some LN problems could be fixed only by changing Bitcoin protocol and he knows it won't happen so he resigned because he does not want to be a part of failure.

Today Bitcoin is beyond repair and people are using Monero for payments anyway.
It would be hard to convince them back, as Bitcoin fees are much higher, it's much slower and it has no privacy.

And who would want to store their wealth on a transparent blockchain for the whole world to see ? after all, Swiss accounts were popular back in the days mainly because they offered privacy.

Monero is the Swiss account of today and it works TODAY. I am using it daily for small purchases and it's great 

[OgNasty]

LN solving scalability issues is directly correlated with Bitcoin as a P2P economy since it needs transactions to be affordable making it easier to transfer between peers with less anoying network clogs.

I agree that we need more decentralized products to boost the network, but we are far from chasing fiat gains, at least not at the protocol level.

LN doesn’t solve scalability issues any better than any other shitcoin. Someday people will find out the hard way that there is on chain Bitcoin and then there is everything else. With a little luck, maybe the folks that support this fundamentally flawed L2 will not live long enough to see its destruction and the pain it causes.

[anarkiboy]

LN solving scalability issues is directly correlated with Bitcoin as a P2P economy since it needs transactions to be affordable making it easier to transfer between peers with less anoying network clogs.

I agree that we need more decentralized products to boost the network, but we are far from chasing fiat gains, at least not at the protocol level.

LN doesn’t solve scalability issues any better than any other shitcoin. Someday people will find out the hard way that there is on chain Bitcoin and then there is everything else. With a little luck, maybe the folks that support this fundamentally flawed L2 will not live long enough to see its destruction and the pain it causes.

Exactly, due to LN developers have stopped seeking solutions on L1 to make it more scalable, right now even if LN was working the L1 congestion wouldn't allow it to function as it should.
Bitcoin would be way more scalable if developers focused on L1 instead of promising LN will fix scalability and privacy issues.

For proper L2, the L1 needs to be scalable to some degree as well. Bitcoin lacks foundation for proper solution.
On top of that we have ordinal spam and devs are still arguing if they should fix the exploitable behavior of datacarriersize limit:

https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/issues/29187

Some of them are not even devs but still put a fight against fixing this issue, what a joke.

[wallet4bitcoin]

Talking about people leaving Bitcoin isn't a new thing, might be a new topic but it isn't a new event as they always come back years later with confessions of their regret and all that.

Again, I see people leave when it is a bear season or there is a dip, I can call them paper hands for their attitudes expose them. Let those who believe in the technology continue standing strong and not get distracted by who leaves or stays.

[Agbe]

but we are far from chasing fiat gains,

Yes but the real p2p of bitcoin which propelled Satoshi Nakamoto to create and launched bitcoin is somehow sideline underground which was mainly to purchase goods and services digitally to strengthen the world economy and made make things more cheap. But everything is now focusing on investment aspect only. And I believed the policies and of the government is also affect the mass use of bitcoin in the commercial aspect. And I think as it is now. Bitcoin is a commercial commodity or a commercial asset for people to buy and sell. But the main purpose was to use bitcoin to buy things but the opposite is the cause right now, whereby fiat is used to buy bitcoin. And I think that is why Op is asking if bitcoin is for fiat gain.

People leaving bitcoin is a people division and they are many factors that can lead to that. And anyone who has tested bitcoin and see the good part of it, will not leave it forever but they will still come back again.

[Franctoshi]

This isn't first of its kind, First they said Bitcoin is fake money, some said Bitcoin is a scam and it a pozi scheme, yet Bitcoin is still in existence and proving them wrong, some of them that casted Bitcoin in the past has come back to embrace it, Bitcoin has come to stay and doesn't need Mike Hearn to thrive. Bitcoin is decentralized and aren't affected by what a single entity thinks about Bitcoin.

[BIT-BENDER]

This might be an ill-informed question, but I came across this recently and was wondering how we feel about BTC upgrades/improvements?

It feels like BTC is now chasing fiat gains over building a global p2p economy, hoping that lightning network or some other L2 solves the scaling problems for non-custodial transactions.

https://blog.plan99.net/the-resolution-of-the-bitcoin-experiment-dabb30201f7

How do you mean Bitcoin is chasing Fiat gains? Bitcoin is not doing the chasing but Investors who wants to see their investment grow are the ones who are comparing the value of Bitcoin to fiat to know how far they gave gained or lost in there Bitcoin investment. I actually have nothing against that, everyone is entitled to what they choose to do in this space.
I think this doesn't affect the other quality of Bitcoin. It still serve as an anonymous financial system that gives freedom to enthusiasts.

[mpoletiek]

When the BTC protocol doesn't change to enable tx's for the masses people will create things like Lightning Network.

I don't see this as a bad thing. Ideally BTC can evolve, but I don't see evidence that it's willing to do that. Obviously it will take time, but I'm afraid it's currently not governed in a healthy way.

Concerning Lightning, it seems like it was a good idea, but technically complex so most people end up using custodial solutions or products like Phoenix, which is centralized infrastructure.

Is there light at the end of this tunnel?

[DeathAngel]

Loads of these high net worth, high bitcoin stash guys fell off the wagon & turned to shitcoins or trying to change bitcoin to match what they want. I think a lot of those guys have big egos & are used to getting their own way, they aren’t used to not being able to be an ultimate decision maker in life. Look at the likes of Roger Ver, same thing with him. This is why decentralisation is one of the best features with bitcoin because it doesn’t matter how much money you have, there are no heroes.

[Mr.right85]

LN is a completely different network. if you analyse it you will notice:
its does not have a blockchain.
nor is it fixed to only support and work with bitcoin
its payments are not even measured in sats but produce onion packets(payments) measured in msats which is a currency unit bitcoin does NOT understand
to use LN you are abandoning using bitcoin.
your payments are not settled(confirmed)
mining pools do not collect fees when doing LN Msat payments
the flaws of LN are a known risk to users funds
the flaws do not guarantee users will get settled amounts they are shown to be owed whilst in LN
the flaws allow funds to be stolen

if bitcoin was a debit account of real value, LN is the credit card of iou funds which can leave people in debt(loss)

I’ll have to quote this so some users might get some education of it.
LN might be a fast network but, it isn’t the Bitcoin network still to be talked about as though it were. Bitcoin network might be much slower but, you really wouldn’t expect a perfect or almost perfect network for a project in its beta phase as I like to see it.
It’s continued to improve over the years with an increased population and adoption.

It’s no lie that people seek it for fiat gains as a purpose to holding in recent times but, with the problem of finding merchants that are ready to accept Bitcoin for commodities still largely a thing, you wouldn’t blame people anymore than that.

[SatoPrincess]

It’s no lie that people seek it for fiat gains as a purpose to holding in recent times but, with the problem of finding merchants that are ready to accept Bitcoin for commodities still largely a thing, you wouldn’t blame people anymore than that.

I would argue that the problem is more of bitcoin holders not wanting to spend their bitcoins or use it as a payment method for goods and services. The fear of missing out is the main reason why people are not willing to spend their bitcoins. No one wants to be the next Laszlo Hanyecz. I believe that if there was a high demand from customers to pay for goods & services, merchants would make a provision for them to do so.