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Brian Armstrong has quite the history of being on the wrong side of every argument to do with safe and scalable crypto implementation. He has been a champion o

Brian Armstrong has quite the history of being on the wrong side of every argument to do with safe and scalable crypto implementation. He has been a champion of centralization and attacks on bitcoin governance. He was a vocal proponent of four out of the five failed fork attempts of bitcoin over the past couple of years. He, and coinbase investors, are very lucky they had people like Charlie Lee managing the technical parts of coinbase.

oconnor663 9y ago
I dunno, are we happy with the status quo? Making money is nice, but I miss being able to use bitcoins to buy things.
- Frogolocalypse 9y ago
  I have a bitcoin debit card. It works just fine thanks. I can spend it anywhere that accepts a card.
  - tdurden 9y ago
    You are spending fiat though with that debit card, like every debit card. Transactions are off-chain.
    - Frogolocalypse 9y ago
      That makes absolutely no difference whatsoever. By your logic, people using coinbase to hold their coins aren't holding bitcoin. It is exactly the same. Bitcoin from my wallet is being spent. It is increasing in value while i don't spend it, because it is in bitcoin. It is no different than an American using their cc in europe.
      - tdurden 9y ago
        > By your logic, people using coinbase to hold their coins aren't holding bitcoin Exactly, they aren't. Coinbase owns the private keys, thus the bitcoin.
        Frogolocalypse 9y ago
        I completely agree. That why the money on my bitcoin debit card is only a fraction of the total amount of bitcoin I own, and I put money on the card when I want to. Because I understand the risk of putting bitcoin on an exchange, and am prepared to accept that risk for that amount, for the convenience of being able to spend my bitcoin whenever I choose.
        CryptoPunk 9y ago
        What you're promoting is a totally centralized cryptocurrency vision for the vast majority of the world, where the very rich and large institutions alone get to use their private keys with any frequency. It utterly contradicts the title of Bitcoin's white paper: Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System
        Frogolocalypse 9y ago
        Nodes are peers. If you don't own one, especially if you can't run one, and you don't use it to secure your transactions on the blockchain, you aren't one. You skipped right over the peer part, even though the word is used twice, and started talking about the cash part.
        CryptoPunk 9y ago
        If you don't control your own private keys, you don't have any control of your own money. Satoshi certainly did not think using light clients while controlling one's own private keys contradicted the principle of "peer-to-peer electronic cash". No matter how you try to spin it, you can't make a future where the vast majority can't control their own private keys sound consistent with Satoshi's vision, or rewrite the public statements Satoshi made about how Bitcoin should scale.
nextstep 9y ago
I’m not sure if you’re willfully misinterpreting what happened or just unware, but the debate over how to scale bitcoin (basically, on-chain vs off-chain) is know being played out with Bitcoin vs Bitcoin Cash. And it’s looking like big blocks is actually a solution for scalability (lower fees, faster transactions), at least in the short term. (For those not aware, Bitcoin Cash is a fork of Bitcoin that removes segwit, the initial groundwork for off-chain scaling solutions, and instead simply increased the blocksize; so far this has proven to greatly reduce network congestion.) Maybe it was the right call for Coinbase to not support many of the forks, but they will be adding support for Bitcoin Cash in 2018 (at least withdrawals). So it’s inaccurate to characterize Brian Armstrong on the “losing” side of these debates.
- etr-strike 9y ago
  Bitcoin Cash is the brute force solution to scaling. Increasing block size results in longer validation times as well as slower block propagation. Both of these things lead to centralization. The entire purpose of bitcoin is to be as decentralized as possible. Anyways, here's a video released today of a lightning transaction happening on mainnet: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a73Gz3Tvx3k https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a73Gz3Tvx3k Here's a video of Greg Maxwell explaining how slight propagation delays can lead to drastic increases in centralization: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EHIuuKCm53o https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EHIuuKCm53o And here's rootstock, an ethereum compatible solution for smart contracts: https://www.rsk.co/ https://www.rsk.co/ Bitcoin Cash is like trying to solve traffic congestion by adding more lanes.
  - namelost 9y ago
    > Increasing block size results in longer validation times as well as slower block propagation Processing more transactions requires more resources. That's not a bad thing. One might note that currently Bitcoin Cash is usable as a medium of exchange, whereas Bitcoin is not. They can reduce the bandwidth requirements by implementing e.g. compact blocks.
    - Frogolocalypse 9y ago
CryptoPunk 9y ago
Armstrong was right about Bitcoin's 1 MB limit leading to massive fee increases and retail unusability, and he was right about Ethereum becoming massively adopted. Your characterization of Armstrong's position as being pro-centralization is typical of the total disconnect between the 1-MB-Bitcoin crowd and reality. According to your logic, Satoshi Nakamoto was pro centralization when he described a future with GB blocks and thousands of transactions on-chain per second.
- swalsh 9y ago
  For people who want to understand more about the context of this, this is a great read: https://www.reddit.com/r/BitcoinMarkets/comments/6rxw7k/informative_btc_vs_bch_articles/dl8v4lp/ https://www.reddit.com/r/BitcoinMarkets/comments/6rxw7k/info...
- xorcist 9y ago
  One would think that his company would be first in line to implement the new 2 MB limit then. But no, they're last, and they still don't batch their transactions or implement a proper fee estimator. Their customers still overpay for transactions, often by several hundred percent. The reality is that they don't care much about fees, they just pass them on to their customers.
swalsh 9y ago
"He was a vocal proponent of four out of the five failed fork attempts of bitcoin over the past couple of years." Maybe he boasted what was best for the currency, but propaganda won in the end. So he switched knowing a manipulated currency is not an investment he is interested in? It's important to realize that bitcoin's message is being manipulated by blockstream. It's not a conspiracy theory, it's conspiracy reality. Subreddits like /r/bitcoin had moderation schemes that buried support for the change, and boosted opposition.

oconnor663 9y ago

I dunno, are we happy with the status quo? Making money is nice, but I miss being able to use bitcoins to buy things.

Frogolocalypse 9y ago
I have a bitcoin debit card. It works just fine thanks. I can spend it anywhere that accepts a card.
- tdurden 9y ago
  You are spending fiat though with that debit card, like every debit card. Transactions are off-chain.
  - Frogolocalypse 9y ago
    That makes absolutely no difference whatsoever. By your logic, people using coinbase to hold their coins aren't holding bitcoin. It is exactly the same. Bitcoin from my wallet is being spent. It is increasing in value while i don't spend it, because it is in bitcoin. It is no different than an American using their cc in europe.
    - tdurden 9y ago
      > By your logic, people using coinbase to hold their coins aren't holding bitcoin Exactly, they aren't. Coinbase owns the private keys, thus the bitcoin.
      - Frogolocalypse 9y ago
        I completely agree. That why the money on my bitcoin debit card is only a fraction of the total amount of bitcoin I own, and I put money on the card when I want to. Because I understand the risk of putting bitcoin on an exchange, and am prepared to accept that risk for that amount, for the convenience of being able to spend my bitcoin whenever I choose.
        CryptoPunk 9y ago
        What you're promoting is a totally centralized cryptocurrency vision for the vast majority of the world, where the very rich and large institutions alone get to use their private keys with any frequency. It utterly contradicts the title of Bitcoin's white paper: Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System
        Frogolocalypse 9y ago
        Nodes are peers. If you don't own one, especially if you can't run one, and you don't use it to secure your transactions on the blockchain, you aren't one. You skipped right over the peer part, even though the word is used twice, and started talking about the cash part.
        CryptoPunk 9y ago
        If you don't control your own private keys, you don't have any control of your own money. Satoshi certainly did not think using light clients while controlling one's own private keys contradicted the principle of "peer-to-peer electronic cash". No matter how you try to spin it, you can't make a future where the vast majority can't control their own private keys sound consistent with Satoshi's vision, or rewrite the public statements Satoshi made about how Bitcoin should scale.

nextstep 9y ago

I’m not sure if you’re willfully misinterpreting what happened or just unware, but the debate over how to scale bitcoin (basically, on-chain vs off-chain) is know being played out with Bitcoin vs Bitcoin Cash. And it’s looking like big blocks is actually a solution for scalability (lower fees, faster transactions), at least in the short term. (For those not aware, Bitcoin Cash is a fork of Bitcoin that removes segwit, the initial groundwork for off-chain scaling solutions, and instead simply increased the blocksize; so far this has proven to greatly reduce network congestion.) Maybe it was the right call for Coinbase to not support many of the forks, but they will be adding support for Bitcoin Cash in 2018 (at least withdrawals). So it’s inaccurate to characterize Brian Armstrong on the “losing” side of these debates.

etr-strike 9y ago
Bitcoin Cash is the brute force solution to scaling. Increasing block size results in longer validation times as well as slower block propagation. Both of these things lead to centralization. The entire purpose of bitcoin is to be as decentralized as possible. Anyways, here's a video released today of a lightning transaction happening on mainnet: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a73Gz3Tvx3k https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a73Gz3Tvx3k Here's a video of Greg Maxwell explaining how slight propagation delays can lead to drastic increases in centralization: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EHIuuKCm53o https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EHIuuKCm53o And here's rootstock, an ethereum compatible solution for smart contracts: https://www.rsk.co/ https://www.rsk.co/ Bitcoin Cash is like trying to solve traffic congestion by adding more lanes.
- namelost 9y ago
  > Increasing block size results in longer validation times as well as slower block propagation Processing more transactions requires more resources. That's not a bad thing. One might note that currently Bitcoin Cash is usable as a medium of exchange, whereas Bitcoin is not. They can reduce the bandwidth requirements by implementing e.g. compact blocks.
  - Frogolocalypse 9y ago

CryptoPunk 9y ago

Armstrong was right about Bitcoin's 1 MB limit leading to massive fee increases and retail unusability, and he was right about Ethereum becoming massively adopted. Your characterization of Armstrong's position as being pro-centralization is typical of the total disconnect between the 1-MB-Bitcoin crowd and reality. According to your logic, Satoshi Nakamoto was pro centralization when he described a future with GB blocks and thousands of transactions on-chain per second.

swalsh 9y ago
For people who want to understand more about the context of this, this is a great read: https://www.reddit.com/r/BitcoinMarkets/comments/6rxw7k/informative_btc_vs_bch_articles/dl8v4lp/ https://www.reddit.com/r/BitcoinMarkets/comments/6rxw7k/info...
xorcist 9y ago
One would think that his company would be first in line to implement the new 2 MB limit then. But no, they're last, and they still don't batch their transactions or implement a proper fee estimator. Their customers still overpay for transactions, often by several hundred percent. The reality is that they don't care much about fees, they just pass them on to their customers.

swalsh 9y ago

"He was a vocal proponent of four out of the five failed fork attempts of bitcoin over the past couple of years." Maybe he boasted what was best for the currency, but propaganda won in the end. So he switched knowing a manipulated currency is not an investment he is interested in? It's important to realize that bitcoin's message is being manipulated by blockstream. It's not a conspiracy theory, it's conspiracy reality. Subreddits like /r/bitcoin had moderation schemes that buried support for the change, and boosted opposition.