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In this article he can't tell if Blockstream has evil intent towards the Bitcoin dream so he looks for a complicated logical explanation that assumes away that possibility. My theory is much simpler (evil intent by unknown powers using Blockstream as a pawn: @Big-Bubbler/the-troll-army-still-cant-stop-magic-internet-money-c84c5b92">https://read.cash/@Big-Bubbler/the-troll-army-still-cant-stop-magic-internet-money-c84c5b92) but unproven.

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These factors lead to the conclusion that Bitcoin-style cryptocurrency has structural flaws that mean it cannot ever achieve the goal of true decentralization (defined as the absence of ruling authorities), because deep down, the idea of “digital gold” is too attractive to people who simply don’t agree with that goal in the first place … even if they may claim they do.

His conclusion is that no Bitcoin can become truly decentralized because some people do not value that feature. Because I believe the capture of BTC was implemented to stop the Bitcoin dream and that the dream itself is still valued, I think the dream is still possible. It will not be easy and the 'dark powers' are still attacking any project that tries to achieve the dream, but enough people will keep working to make a decentralized currency eventually.

Those opposed or fooled will claim we are failing and can never succeed up to the last moment when we do. One of the tricks they use to fool us is making us think we (those who still believe) are a small minority by using social engineering.

The Bitcoin projects working to fulfill the real dream of Bitcoin are not yet decentralized. I believe they can't be until the work on the protocol is finished. That will not be finished until we solve the 'scaling for massive worldwide adoption' issue. Ideally this solution would make the token have unlimited scaling so changes to the protocol would never be needed again. Releasing the power to make changes seems like the only way to make an implementation truly decentralized.

Forking to a new token with different rules will always be an option, but if this happens for a really important reason supported by the community, I hope the new fork would also release the power to make changes to the new protocol to show support for the importance of decentralization. The possibility of forking with community support does seriously weaken the tokens true decentralization so making this hard to do might be a good thing?

So I believe a sufficiently decentralized Bitcoin will eventually exist because it is valued by enough people. We may stumble or be maliciously tripped many times on the way to the goal, but giving up because it will be hard and many social media accounts tell you you will fail and that no one cares about the original dream of Bitcoin anymore seems like a mistake to me.

Edit: Sorry I was late offering my 2c u/mike_hearn. I also appreciate your past efforts on Bitcoin and wish you all the best.

In this article he can't tell if Blockstream has evil intent towards the Bitcoin dream so he looks for a complicated logical explanation that assumes away that possibility. My theory is much simpler (evil intent by unknown powers using Blockstream as a pawn: @Big-Bubbler/the-troll-army-still-cant-stop-magic-internet-money-c84c5b92">https://read.cash/@Big-Bubbler/the-troll-army-still-cant-stop-magic-internet-money-c84c5b92) but unproven.

​

These factors lead to the conclusion that Bitcoin-style cryptocurrency has structural flaws that mean it cannot ever achieve the goal of true decentralization (defined as the absence of ruling authorities), because deep down, the idea of “digital gold” is too attractive to people who simply don’t agree with that goal in the first place … even if they may claim they do.

His conclusion is that no Bitcoin can become truly decentralized because some people do not value that feature. Because I believe the capture of BTC was implemented to stop the Bitcoin dream and that the dream itself is still valued, I think the dream is still possible. It will not be easy and the 'dark powers' are still attacking any project that tries to achieve the dream, but enough people will keep working to make a decentralized currency eventually.

Those opposed or fooled will claim we are failing and can never succeed up to the last moment when we do. One of the tricks they use to fool us is making us think we (those who still believe) are a small minority by using social engineering.

The Bitcoin projects working to fulfill the real dream of Bitcoin are not yet decentralized. I believe they can't be until the work on the protocol is finished. That will not be finished until we solve the 'scaling for massive worldwide adoption' issue. Ideally this solution would make the token have unlimited scaling so changes to the protocol would never be needed again. Releasing the power to make changes seems like the only way to make an implementation truly decentralized.

Forking to a new token with different rules will always be an option, but if this happens for a really important reason supported by the community, I hope the new fork would also release the power to make changes to the new protocol to show support for the importance of decentralization. The possibility of forking with community support does seriously weaken the tokens true decentralization so making this hard to do might be a good thing?

So I believe a sufficiently decentralized Bitcoin will eventually exist because it is valued by enough people. We may stumble or be maliciously tripped many times on the way to the goal, but giving up because it will be hard and many social media accounts tell you you will fail and that no one cares about the original dream of Bitcoin anymore seems like a mistake to me.

I love Mike and Gavin, maybe they should keep working with bitcoin cash. I always remember them when I see crypto-related videos.

Key takeaway:

With the breakdown of the blockchain’s voting mechanism due to censorship, DoS attacks and miners refusing to run anything except Core because they are afraid that ‘conflict’ will lower the price, there is no process in place to ensure the proponents of the two visions fairly compete over the project’s direction.

In such an environment it is inevitable that people with the unconstrained vision will win because their beliefs naturally justify wildly aggressive tactics. Deception, censorship, obfuscation, delaying, making the rules up as they go along and outright criminal attacks on people who disagree with them can all be justified as being necessary to ensure the right outcomes are achieved. Their feelings of superiority combine with severe levels of groupthink to blind them to their own mistakes. The howls of anger and frustration from across the community are ignored and written off as merely the ‘baying of the mob’.

I would tend to agree that people who think the ends justify the means, any means, will have the upper hand in a conflict.

The key strategy for the other party to win, then, is to strive for there being no conflict, and that they pursue what they think is a viable goal as if the aggressive party didn't even exist. This doesn't mean being complacent; to the contrary, this is extremely aggressive but within the bounds of ethics.

It was simply people have no idea how to define a currency code correctly which has nothing to do with preference and does not require people to agree on everything. Not that far reached philosophy at all.

Obsolete

Some of the issues still exist. None of Hearn's opinions are relevant. He wasted a lot of words on ad hominem and shallow political metaphors and demonstrated a very weak understanding of the technical questions

Michael Marqaudt, the worst guy in the world.

So much respect for Mike (and Gavin). Would love to see both of them back working on Bitcoin Cash!

we’re fortunate enough to have gone through such crazy drama early on. mike, gavin, roger, craig - bitcoin has demonstrated its anti fragility and now we know how these types of social attack vectors work.

Yup... 6 people who decide about the Bitcoin Core code consider themselves as gods, and the rest are morons who can't be trusted. Those who could oppose Core developers are scared because of greed.

If you quit bitcoin... bitcoin will quit you and doesnt give a f... time and again bitcoin has shown the world that bitcoin is bigger than a dev be it Satoshi be it mike hearn. Hearn lost all the respect too by rage quitting... he should now understand what a consensus is and what a temper tantrum is

The blocksize debate was fully manufactured drama that tried very hard to make it look like as if the Bitcoin community was evenly split between big-blockers and small-blockers.

In this medium post Mike Hearn publishes an article that he claims to have written back in 2016, and which contains this quote:

Then one day, something terrible and unthinkable happens. The Core Developers disagree with each other! They are fighting over the “block size limit” and are splitting into two factions! How might you perceive this event? One faction, led by Gavin Andresen who was famously left in charge by Satoshi, wants to increase the limit. Allowing the block chain to grow seems obvious but wait … another faction, led by Gregory Maxwell, claims raising the limit would be dangerous because it would threaten decentralisation for technical scaling reasons.

In reality, Core developers and users had overwhelmingly agreed to a significant block size increase. There wouldn’t have been any drama except for the unfortunate situation that colluding Chinese miners that were controlling the great majority of the hash power were able to abuse this to stall the activation of the highly anticipated segwit softfork that included a block size increase.

Not much later, Gavin Andresen inexplicably vouched for Craig Wright to be Satoshi in a jaw dropping display of ignorance and his commit rights to the Bitcoin repository were revoked, also because Gavin hadn’t used them for some time.

Respect for Mike! The thought that implementing a competing currency to fiat currencies could be easy sounds so delusional, hence all the battles we keep overcoming...the fact that the space keeps growing does bring hope...also the fact that no one can roll back what has been done and what people have learned is reassuring! The odds of growth are much higher than those of shrinking the adoption of decentralised currencies! If it wasn't for the white paper and for the fact that BCH emerged from the scaling wars I would be so much more fearful for the upcoming central bank's digital currencies...the near future may not be all that bright but it surely would be darker without Bitcoin keeping somehow the centralised power over currency in check!

He's just still salty from selling sub 1k

Mike Hearn is a scammer

Mike had the same foolish "burning bridge" epiphany that led to the demise of Nokia.

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/blog/2011/feb/09/nokia-burning-platform-memo-elop

Now he will forever be immortalized on the internet as the #1 hit for "whiny rage quit".

Incidentally Roger Ver is the #1 hit for "salty roger"

Just pathetic

Cryptocurrency is an irresistible force pitted against the immovable object of human nature. Mike correctly highlights that the constraint on the Bitcoin project to date has been ideological purity. That has been apparent for over 5 years, where those in charge of the BTC project have intentionally or accidentally cultivated a false narrative that conflates immutability with resistance to functional change. Those things are related but are also quite different.

It is a minor tragedy for the world that Gavin, Mike, Jeff and others were marginalised in favour of Greg, Adam and Luke. I hope there is a parallel universe not so far away where the former are in charge of the Bitcoin project and hundreds of millions of people are using the network for their economic freedom daily.

As far as where we are now, the truth is that what constitutes success or failure is of course also subjective. Some might sight that fact the crypto has existed for over a decade, has hundreds of billions of dollars wrapped up into it, and thousands of the worlds best a brightest working on it as clear evidence of its success. Even if that is not in the form we in this forum would have loved to have seen.

Fortunately, most people are not ideologs, and what always wins out in the end is utility over ideology. Look at Marc Falzon, he went out as a newb last week to use BTC and switched to what worked, and ideology had nothing to do with it.

Crypto cannot be uninvited, and one of the happy accidents of the fracturing of the different projects is that the ecosystem is now much more like a hydra that the incumbents can do nothing about without looking like totalitarian overlords. Computers, networking and the hard work of BCH developers has also moved things on making on chain scaling even more of an obvious solution.

The immovable object will ultimately succumb to the irresistible force of the need of the people that crypto fulfils, whether that is in the form of Bitcoin Cash or another project.

Seems like he's still sour on being wrong and losing his attempted take-over of the protocol.

Yes, it’s a pile of utter nonsensical shite.

I'll be surprised if the post on r/bitcoin is not deleted by the mods.

Fuck off Mike! I thought you said bitcoin failed? half a decade later, it's 18k! no one cares what you think.

Mind boggling how some of these people acted. Everyone should read this.

This is a new post from Mike Hearn posted yesterday.

Well worth the read.

I think you should distinguish the market from democracy. The democracy can be captured, and it creates square-like rules that does not fit everybody. It is also a question not only the ability of the leaders to do what is best for the society, but also their intentions. It is also intrinsically immoral.

The market on the other hand, have votes, but not everybody the same vote, it depends on how eager you are to get what you want, and you are in the market, changing it, even if you don't know how it works, and even if you are idealistically against the free market. And it never fixes everything, it always goes only half way, which is good because it means there is leeway for everybody.

The market works in parallel with the formal economy, it is a security valve if the leaders go astray. The planned economy of the state depends on the market, and if the planners go too far in destroying the market, the state collapses.

Even money, which is a profitable state enterprise, based on swindle. Everywhere (except a short period in the USA), all kinds of money have been available to the public, including gold. Now we have something that is better than gold in the practicality sense, and the market is interested, it just takes some time for everybody to understand the immediate, and even more the future, advantages for the individual.

The resistance we meet from the establishment is fierce, using all their powers, which is force, but also their common tools of propaganda, disinformation, calling on the public's built in care for others. Their reasons are obvious, they would like to continue the scam forever.

We have some experience with forks, and we have multiple incarnations of sound and not so sound money types, which is the market enthusiasts dream. I think the future looks bright, even if a sound crypto money type does not take over completely.