Mike Hearn Leaves Bitcoin

[Abiky]

I don't recall seeing anyone in the last few years who would be deluded enough to believe BTC will replace fiat entirely and become the global currency. Many bitcoiners would not even see that as a desired outcome.
The best I could hope for is for Bitcoin to become a widely and actively used currency that exists as an alternative to fiat currencies, in parallel to them. I'm not cheering for a state-mandated use of Bitcoin.

But as for the usage of Bitcoin for everyday transactions - the biggest problem, aside from network congestion and associated high fees, is that only a very few people earn income in bitcoins. And nobody will be buying btc for fiat just to spend it on goods.

With Bitcoin being marketed as "digital Gold", we can never expect it to replace Fiat. Can we? Most people nowadays only invest in BTC with the hopes of becoming rich quick. It's seen as an investment tool rather than a currency. Besides, BTC's limited transaction capacity prevents it from being used as such. True digital cash needs to be scalable enough to handle high network load on a daily basis. It needs to serve the needs of people all around the world.

Bitcoin is decentralized, but it lacks convenience. On the other hand, "shitcoins" are convenient but they lack decentralization. Then there's the issue of governments putting "obstacles" to help prevent people from using BTC on top of Fiat. With this in mind, Bitcoin will always remain an alternative currency (instead of a direct replacement of Fiat). Perhaps, that's the reason why Mike Hearn left Bitcoin?

[tranthidung]

Technology is improving so is the Bitcoin scalability if the developer really is seeking out a true solution for the problem.  Remember there is no permanent in this world but change, scalability for Bitcoin is just a script away.  If developer find out and created a script that will make Bitcoin scale, then it can refute the statement of never reaching the adoption level because of what it is today.

It's not easy like you thought but I agree there is room for technical developments but so far, with what we have seen, Layer 2, side chains are solutions temporarily now.

For on chain solutions, we still have future ahead but it's not too easy for developers to find solutions technically.

If you are keen on temporary solutions, see some solutions and discussions in

• Sidechain Observer - Bitcoin L2 Projects & current state of development

I quote my post. Security, Scalability, Speed are in a pyramid and if you scale one thing up, one or two others will be affected down.

Generally when transaction speed is main concern, and priority is the speed, a blockchain must sacrifice other things including security. It's my understanding and if I move big fund, I don't pick these side chains that I only consider to use with small transactions.

Like if you want to get convenience and save your time, you use cross chain bridge, let's accept bigger risk. It's convenient, I agree but I don't like to take bigger risk.

[Abiky]

It's not easy like you thought but I agree there is room for technical developments but so far, with what we have seen, Layer 2, side chains are solutions temporarily now.

For on chain solutions, we still have future ahead but it's not too easy for developers to find solutions technically.

If you are keen on temporary solutions, see some solutions and discussions in

• Sidechain Observer - Bitcoin L2 Projects & current state of development

I quote my post. Security, Scalability, Speed are in a pyramid and if you scale one thing up, one or two others will be affected down.

I don't think sidechains and L2s are temporary solutions. Especially with the core development team's reluctance to increase on-chain transaction capacity. Raising the block size (now block weight) is out of the picture. You can see why devs wants us to move to the flawed Lightning Network. I guess that's one of the few reasons why Mike Hearn left the project. Perhaps, we'll see him join forked chains such as Bitcoin Cash or Bitcoin SV. Only time will tell. There were even rumors that Gavin Andressen was going to contribute to BCH's development.

All of the "greats" are completely disappointed with the path Bitcoin has taken lately. It's now even worse with the institutionalization of BTC. "Wall Street" has all of the cards to manipulate Bitcoin to its own benefit. Instead of going against the existing financial system (something Satoshi meant to avoid in the first place), Bitcoin has "bowed down" to it. The future is unpredictable, so I'd hope for the best.

[dezoel]

To be deluded means to be misled but I think it's not misleading when someone believes or say that Bitcoin will replace fiat or even become a global currency, though I guess that is because I also believe on it but for those who are like you who don't, you will say that there is no way. Oh well, we will only see if who among us is correct in the future.

Maybe if you will say in the past, then that is more believable because Bitcoin that time is still not known and it gained a lot of negative impressions. Your best hope right there is fortunately happening already in Bitcoin. Even though there are also people who buy and only HODL their BTC, BTC is still a currency, so you, saying that the coin is widely and actively used as a currency can still be the same as that. There's also people who literally use their BTC like a currency.

Even though there are known challenges in regards to this, they may not care at all because BTC still had some advantages. Even though a state-mandated use of BTC sounds cool, I think it can also be annoying especially to those poorer areas and then to those less techy individuals. If the state mandate the use of BTC, all workers will now also be paid by BTC of course.

[DooMAD]

All of the "greats" are completely disappointed with the path Bitcoin has taken lately. It's now even worse with the institutionalization of BTC. "Wall Street" has all of the cards to manipulate Bitcoin to its own benefit. Instead of going against the existing financial system (something Satoshi meant to avoid in the first place), Bitcoin has "bowed down" to it. The future is unpredictable, so I'd hope for the best.

Weaker systems are subverted more quickly.  The actions taken ensure that the base protocol remains strong.  Idealists can be disappointed if they like, but it doesn't change the fact that sensible people came to a sensible conclusion.  Institutional investors would have gotten involved regardless of how scaling was handled, so try not to conflate separate issues.

[Gladitorcomeback]

There's also people who literally use their BTC like a currency.

There can be, but the numbers will be very low due to the lack of opportunities to use Bitcoin as a currency. It doesn't make for someone to keep only Bitcoin on their mobile phone and roam around when they know they can't do everything with it since not every place accepts Bitcoin around the world unless you are in a special city or country where Bitcoin is legally accepted such as El Salvador.

I wouldn't say it's something that can't happen because that would be wrong, and I know it's happening in some places around the globe, but for it to become the norm, for every single Bitcoin holder in any part of the world to be able to use their Bitcoin to buy a coffee or go grocery shopping or pay for gas with their Bitcoin, it will still take some time.

Bitcoin still has a long way to go, we might have global adoption but we are not done yet.

[AprilioMP]

Mike Hearn Leaves Bitcoin

What do I care about people leaving Bitcoin including someone named Mike Hearn even though I found out from a google search that Mike Hearn is a former Bitcoin developer.
He left Bitcoin probably because his thinking has changed due to something that is not certain what the main reason is.
Why do I say what do I care, because Bitcoin will continue to run as time goes by.

Then regarding your feeling that Bitcoin is now chasing fiat profits. I am silent because I have never felt that way at all even though I cannot use Bitcoin like fiat to pay for goods and services.

[Z-tight]

All of the "greats" are completely disappointed with the path Bitcoin has taken lately. It's now even worse with the institutionalization of BTC. "Wall Street" has all of the cards to manipulate Bitcoin to its own benefit. Instead of going against the existing financial system (something Satoshi meant to avoid in the first place), Bitcoin has "bowed down" to it. The future is unpredictable, so I'd hope for the best.

I don't see the path that is so disappointing, there is also no institutionalization of BTC. BTC is free for everyone and it is censorship resistant, so institutional investors were always going to find interest in BTC, and there is nobody who can stop them from buying. Institutional investors can only manipulate the price of BTC, if anything, but they do not have any control of the BTC network, so it is not a problem for the network in my honest opinion.

[icalical]

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's fair question, however, Bitcoin remains focused on a vision of a global peer-to-peer economy, and into such upgrades lie the keys to solving its scaling issues. The Lightning Network provides for speedy and cheap transactions by processing them off-chain. Hence, congestion on the main blockchain is reduced. This approach is crucial in the maintenance of the non-custodial, decentralized nature of Bitcoin, while finding a suitable way to deal with faster transactions in great need. Improving at an unprecedented rate with over 16,000 nodes, Bitcoin is upgrading without sacrificing one speck of its old ideals.

[tbct_mt2]

That's fair question, however, Bitcoin remains focused on a vision of a global peer-to-peer economy, and into such upgrades lie the keys to solving its scaling issues.

Bitcoin developers have many things in their consideration and to-do lists, not only scalability. Scalability means nothing if scaling up means less secured blockchain. So far, we have Bitcoin as a biggest and most secured blockchain to use, that's good and altcoin blockchains can not compare to Bitcoin blockchain in security.

6 confirmations on Bitcoin blockchain in security equal to hundreds to thousands of confirmations on altcoin blockchains.
https://howmanyconfs.com/

The Lightning Network provides for speedy and cheap transactions by processing them off-chain. Hence, congestion on the main blockchain is reduced.

There are more solutions, not only Bitcoin Lightning Network.

Sidechain Observer - Bitcoin L2 Projects & current state of development

And blockchain, mempool congestions come from non-true Bitcoin users like Ordinals, Runes users who even don't have enough knowledge and idea about Bitcoin mempools and transaction fees as well as don't care about safety of their own capitals. If they buy bitcoin and hold it, they get profit but by purchasing Ordinals, Runes tokens, they lost money.

[DooMAD]

Bitcoin developers have many things in their consideration and to-do lists, not only scalability. Scalability means nothing if scaling up means less secured blockchain. So far, we have Bitcoin as a biggest and most secured blockchain to use, that's good and altcoin blockchains can not compare to Bitcoin blockchain in security.

I wish more people could see things this way.  There's far too many myopic armchair pundits who can't conceive that it's a multi-faceted series of considerations and compromises.  Easy gains are rare and few seem to recognise it.

[Abiky]

Bitcoin developers have many things in their consideration and to-do lists, not only scalability. Scalability means nothing if scaling up means less secured blockchain. So far, we have Bitcoin as a biggest and most secured blockchain to use, that's good and altcoin blockchains can not compare to Bitcoin blockchain in security.

6 confirmations on Bitcoin blockchain in security equal to hundreds to thousands of confirmations on altcoin blockchains.
https://howmanyconfs.com/

There needs to be a balance between security and scalability. Focusing only on security, would hinder adoption of Bitcoin worldwide. Especially when fees will rise all the way to the moon. You'll get security by paying an ultra-high transaction fee. This favors the wealthy, while the poor is forced to look for other options.

Again, L2 networks like the Lightning Network and Stacks are NOT the solution. They're just a short-term fix. Raising the block size a bit will help keep up with daily demand, without sacrificing too much security/reliability/decentralization. I'd say raising the block size to 8mb would be perfectly safe. It all lies in the hands of developers and the community. Here's hoping Mike Hearn makes a comeback soon. The project needs as much "quality" developers as possible to remain resilient. The community already lost Mike Hearn and Gavin Andressen. Will Luke Dashjr be next? I hope not.

[tbct_mt2]

There needs to be a balance between security and scalability. Focusing only on security, would hinder adoption of Bitcoin worldwide. Especially when fees will rise all the way to the moon. You'll get security by paying an ultra-high transaction fee. This favors the wealthy, while the poor is forced to look for other options.

Altcoin developers break this important balance between Security and Scalability. They aim at Scalability and make it better, block size bigger, and even make it worse and terrible with super fast transaction speed; but they ignore another important factor Security.

They also make things more terrible by developing Cross-chain bridges that together with super fast block time and transaction speed, cause to horrible consequences from any hack. Then if hacks happen with massive costs, they tried to do something more terrible like Rollback blockchains.

People see things in different ways and have different interests but with me, altcoin blockchains are terrible in Security. I don't care about security of their blockchains but I must care about security and safety of my fund.

[Abiky]

Altcoin developers break this important balance between Security and Scalability. They aim at Scalability and make it better, block size bigger, and even make it worse and terrible with super fast transaction speed; but they ignore another important factor Security.

They also make things more terrible by developing Cross-chain bridges that together with super fast block time and transaction speed, cause to horrible consequences from any hack. Then if hacks happen with massive costs, they tried to do something more terrible like Rollback blockchains.

People see things in different ways and have different interests but with me, altcoin blockchains are terrible in Security. I don't care about security of their blockchains but I must care about security and safety of my fund.

The added complexity of altcoins, allows for greater vulnerabilities in the long run. Why do you think Satoshi limited Bitcoin's scripting language? Because he wanted it to be simple enough to be used for sending/receiving payments. Adding smart contract features, and other "bells and whistles", will make Bitcoin more complex and prone to hacking. Security is obtained when everything is kept simple.

A good thing the Lightning Network is a separate solution from the main Bitcoin blockchain. Else, it would've made BTC vulnerable already. Even on-chain Ordinals inscriptions are seen as an attack vector by malicious actors. They can keep spamming the chain with such inscriptions, rendering the network useless and utterly-expensive.

Mike Hearn did a lot of meaningful work on the Bitcoin project. But he won't be missed. Especially when Bitcoin has shown to be resilient from time to time. The community will continue to maintain it as usual. May BTC thrive well enough to replace Fiat in the future. At least, that's the dream.

[tranthidung]

Adding smart contract features, and other "bells and whistles", will make Bitcoin more complex and prone to hacking. Security is obtained when everything is kept simple.

Smart contract with Taproot protocol actually caused a lot of problems for Bitcoin users since early 2023. Developers who want quick rich flow tried to use Smart contract through Taproot and abused Bitcoin blockchain for hyping their projects and scam tokens, useless Inscriptions.

These things are scam but look promising and potential for getting profit in newbies' sortsighted vision. Furthermore, it brings more security holes that can be exploited too.

[BlackHatCoiner]

Again, L2 networks like the Lightning Network and Stacks are NOT the solution.

The latter is not an L2 solution in general. It's just another token, which probably uses the term "L2" to get more hype; token founders need to be more creative nowadays.

They're just a short-term fix.

You've got it backwards. Layer 2 solutions are long-term. Short-term would be arbitrarily tinkering with the block size, just as many altcoins have done over the years. And that's true, because it's infeasible to have every person on-chain, creating multiple transactions every day, at the scale of hundreds of millions of people, while simultaneously being practically able to verify the ledger.

[RockBell]

Reading the article from medium which was published around 2016 this dude actually said a lot and with all this he said about promoting bitcoin and not just promotion but also been a developer the part he said bitcoin is an experiment and the potential of it failing is what i think will be determined by the individuals because having been thinking that what if the whales determine to sell what they have it will be a huge blow on the face of bitcoin and it is going to affect the market and before the market might be able to recover from such market it is going to take a lot of time because out of fear some people might even sell so the statement that mike made about invest what you can afford is true but when you stick to such statement out of fear that what will happen to bitcoin might also restrict your investment growth.

and the decision he made about him selling off his bitcoin could be made by anyone their might be other personal reason because i don't see why the possibility of bitcoin falling will make me sell my bitcoin that is why i don't believe that this will be the only reason his quitting. and is opinion is right to him and  i don't also know why he thinks that bitcoin is fighting to be better than other financial system and bitcoin don't needs that the only issue i see is the issue of centralization and that is what mike seems to like that bitcoin be control of a centralized body than individuals, and the decentralized system is what is actually making bitcoin different nothing else, he still quited and people are still investing so what he did his not new.

[franky1]

They're just a short-term fix.

You've got it backwards. Layer 2 solutions are long-term. Short-term would be arbitrarily tinkering with the block size, just as many altcoins have done over the years. And that's true, because it's infeasible to have every person on-chain, creating multiple transactions every day, at the scale of hundreds of millions of people, while simultaneously being practically able to verify the ledger.

bitcoin will never be the "one world currency" (dystopian myth) you portray bitcoin needs to become in your dumb scenario about scaling

bitcoin does not NEED a fee war to support miners to produce a difficult hash for blockchain security right now. so dont drum roll that myth either pretending fee's need to rise right now

the actual long term solution is not eventually high fee per tx.. nor does it require a massive single jump to "hundreds of millions of transactions".. nor does it require migrating everyone away from bitcoin to some middleman managed subnetwork

however a SCALING (periodic growth) of transaction count increase will be needed whereby the more transactions occurring onchain means each individual is nor forced to pay absurd amounts

subnetworks have a place for small niche sub services of certain facilities and functions but subnetworks should not be the primer network everyone is forced to use.

bitcoin does need to scale as long term solution. and befor you cry about your myths, its called scaling not leaping. so dont reply with your rhetoric about leaping to huge blocks or needing huge fee's with restricted tx counts(purely to support migrating to other networks)

P.S
i do laugh when its blackhatcoiner mindset that thinks 1 bitcoin transaction could and should increase to $50+(emphasis ONE TX) but then cries that a $50 hard drive that can store decades of transactions(hundreds of millions) is something too expensive

[DeathAngel]

Mike Hearn lol, I thought we stopped hearing about him after his rage quit during the block size wars in 2016-2017. He’s not relevant in our industry any more, nobody cares what he says or does.

[dzungmobile]

Mike Hearn lol, I thought we stopped hearing about him after his rage quit during the block size wars in 2016-2017. He’s not relevant in our industry any more, nobody cares what he says or does.

His last post was in 2015 but he was last active in Bitcointalk 1 year ago.

His account.
His website: https://plan99.net/~mike/index.html
His blog site: https://blog.plan99.net/

He is part of Bitcoin history, it's can not deny.
Bitcoin Core contributor challenges