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The Bitcoin Foundation was founded and operated by criminals. Bruce Fenton and others have done huge amounts of work to repair the foundation and I commend the

The Bitcoin Foundation was founded and operated by criminals. Bruce Fenton and others have done huge amounts of work to repair the foundation and I commend them for their efforts. However I cannot support an organization which continues to support bad actors, to quote myself: >As a lifetime Foundation member (and a technical contributor to Bitcoin) I think it's within my rights to ask [that Gavin Andresen be removed as chief scientist] >Consider how frustrating misunderstandings like the below are to me: >“...[Gavin Andresen is] still bitcoin’s official chief scientist, according to the Bitcoin Foundation, the not-for-profit that oversees the project...” >http://www.wired.com/2015/08/bitcoin-schism-shows-genius-open-source/ http://www.wired.com/2015/08/bitcoin-schism-shows-genius-ope...

mbrock 11y ago
Are you claiming Andresen is a criminal? If so, why?
- nickodell 11y ago
  I assume he's talking about Charlie Schrem and Mark Karpeles being on the board of BF.
- pstrateman 11y ago
  > Are you claiming Andresen is a criminal? If so, why? No all he did was sell them his reputation. Edit: This is being down voted and I'm honestly not sure why. He quite literally sold the foundation his reputation. He received salary of approximately $200k in 2013 from the foundation.
- chejazi 11y ago
  He's not a criminal but he stopped being the lead contributor to Bitcoin Core to join the contentious Bitcoin XT project. The motivation for this project is a debate about whether increasing the Bitcoin blocksize is an acceptable way to address scalability. In general, it showcases dissent in the consensus policy that governs the way Core changes are made. More background on this: https://bitcoinmagazine.com/articles/gavin-andresen-i-might-take-over-lead-of-bitcoin-xt-1448486445 https://bitcoinmagazine.com/articles/gavin-andresen-i-might-...
  - pmorici 11y ago
    I don't think that is an accurate depiction of what happened. In reality a company called Blockstream who has a financial interest in limiting Bitcoin's block size has stacked the core dev team with people on it's payroll and they are doing everything within their power to cripple Bitcoin so that they can insert themselves as a middle man in Bitcoin transactions. Gavin was not one of the devs who let themselves be bought off by Blockstream and in his frustration over all the other core devs irrationality he has been promoting solutions outside of core.
    - deleted 11y ago
      [deleted]
    - chejazi 11y ago
      Thanks for offering an alternate perspective on this. Could you clarify how they make themselves a middleman in Bitcoin transactions?
      - toomim 11y ago
        Blockstream Liquid makes them a middleman: https://blockstream.com/2015/10/12/introducing-liquid/ https://blockstream.com/2015/10/12/introducing-liquid/ They also work on the lightning network, which creates middlemen. In general, all Blockstream's products are solutions to the problems of (1) bitcoin being hard to change/fork, and (2) the block size being small. Blockstream's products are thus more relevant and useful if bitcoin is difficult to improve, and has limited capacity. This is because all Blockstream's products are built on Sidechains: https://blockstream.com/sidechains.pdf https://blockstream.com/sidechains.pdf Rather than change bitcoin itself, a sidechain lets you create an alternative set of rules for bitcoin, that re-uses the actual bitcoins from the main chain, so that users can put their bitcoins on either set of rules. Sidechains let users move coins between chains with different rulesets. Thus, Sidechains are useful only if it is difficult to add desired features to Bitcoin itself. All Blockstream products (like Liquid above) are implemented as Sidechains. Thus, Blockstream's products will have no purpose unless Bitcoin is limited, and difficult to change, creating a need for a Sidechain. Blockstream employees unanimously oppose every proposed hard fork to bitcoin. At last October's Bitcoin Dev Workshop in San Francisco (ironically run by the Bitcoin Foundation), Blockstream CTO and Bitcoin Core Dev Greg Maxwell, who invented most of the Sidechains tech, said on stage (video recording is online somewhere) he was bummed that so few people use Sidechains, and that his biggest surprise was how much work it takes to get applications in the ecosystem (like wallets, blockchain.info, etc.) to support a Sidechain. He needs people to have a good reason to switch to a Sidechain. If Bitcoin keeps improving, there will be no good reason. Blockstream employees unanimously oppose every proposed hard fork to bitcoin. They are making it hard to improve bitcoin.

mbrock 11y ago

Are you claiming Andresen is a criminal? If so, why?

nickodell 11y ago
I assume he's talking about Charlie Schrem and Mark Karpeles being on the board of BF.
pstrateman 11y ago
> Are you claiming Andresen is a criminal? If so, why? No all he did was sell them his reputation. Edit: This is being down voted and I'm honestly not sure why. He quite literally sold the foundation his reputation. He received salary of approximately $200k in 2013 from the foundation.
chejazi 11y ago
He's not a criminal but he stopped being the lead contributor to Bitcoin Core to join the contentious Bitcoin XT project. The motivation for this project is a debate about whether increasing the Bitcoin blocksize is an acceptable way to address scalability. In general, it showcases dissent in the consensus policy that governs the way Core changes are made. More background on this: https://bitcoinmagazine.com/articles/gavin-andresen-i-might-take-over-lead-of-bitcoin-xt-1448486445 https://bitcoinmagazine.com/articles/gavin-andresen-i-might-...
- pmorici 11y ago
  I don't think that is an accurate depiction of what happened. In reality a company called Blockstream who has a financial interest in limiting Bitcoin's block size has stacked the core dev team with people on it's payroll and they are doing everything within their power to cripple Bitcoin so that they can insert themselves as a middle man in Bitcoin transactions. Gavin was not one of the devs who let themselves be bought off by Blockstream and in his frustration over all the other core devs irrationality he has been promoting solutions outside of core.
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
  - chejazi 11y ago
    Thanks for offering an alternate perspective on this. Could you clarify how they make themselves a middleman in Bitcoin transactions?
    - toomim 11y ago
      Blockstream Liquid makes them a middleman: https://blockstream.com/2015/10/12/introducing-liquid/ https://blockstream.com/2015/10/12/introducing-liquid/ They also work on the lightning network, which creates middlemen. In general, all Blockstream's products are solutions to the problems of (1) bitcoin being hard to change/fork, and (2) the block size being small. Blockstream's products are thus more relevant and useful if bitcoin is difficult to improve, and has limited capacity. This is because all Blockstream's products are built on Sidechains: https://blockstream.com/sidechains.pdf https://blockstream.com/sidechains.pdf Rather than change bitcoin itself, a sidechain lets you create an alternative set of rules for bitcoin, that re-uses the actual bitcoins from the main chain, so that users can put their bitcoins on either set of rules. Sidechains let users move coins between chains with different rulesets. Thus, Sidechains are useful only if it is difficult to add desired features to Bitcoin itself. All Blockstream products (like Liquid above) are implemented as Sidechains. Thus, Blockstream's products will have no purpose unless Bitcoin is limited, and difficult to change, creating a need for a Sidechain. Blockstream employees unanimously oppose every proposed hard fork to bitcoin. At last October's Bitcoin Dev Workshop in San Francisco (ironically run by the Bitcoin Foundation), Blockstream CTO and Bitcoin Core Dev Greg Maxwell, who invented most of the Sidechains tech, said on stage (video recording is online somewhere) he was bummed that so few people use Sidechains, and that his biggest surprise was how much work it takes to get applications in the ecosystem (like wallets, blockchain.info, etc.) to support a Sidechain. He needs people to have a good reason to switch to a Sidechain. If Bitcoin keeps improving, there will be no good reason. Blockstream employees unanimously oppose every proposed hard fork to bitcoin. They are making it hard to improve bitcoin.