F**k Satoshi!

[zju]

Roger Ver hosted a meetup in Santa Clara on Tuesday. Everyone had a great time (including the Blockstream guys and Luke Jr, I hope). At the meetup, Roger recounted a conversation he had a while ago with a developer of Core. Here is a short paraphrasing of Roger's recounting:

Roger: If Satoshi were here and he advocated a bigger block size, what would you do?
Developer of Core: Fuck Satoshi!

As expected, the general reaction to the anecdote was shock and dismay. How disrespectful! How offensive! How blasphemous! That's right I used the B word. I imagine that some people felt that the developer should be burned at the stake.

But, let's step back and consider what was said.

First, I was surprised that Roger, a staunch and outspoken voluntaryist, would actually stoop to an Appeal to Authority. That seems to conflict with what he advocates. Does Roger believe that Satoshi should be in charge of Bitcoin if they/she/he were around? Would Roger follow Satoshi blindly or expect others to follow Satoshi blindly? Does Roger assume that he knows what Satoshi thinks about Bitcoin? In short, What-Would-Satoshi-Do is not something that I would expect from Roger.

Second, I feel that "Fuck Satoshi!" is an appropriate, though crude, response to Roger's question. In my opinion, the disrespect contained in the response is not directed at Satoshi; rather, it is directed at Roger's incarnation and idolatry of Satoshi. These are some reasons why I agree with the developer's response:

• One cannot presume to know how Satoshi feels about the current state of Bitcoin. Regardless, Satoshi's opinion is irrelevant.
• One cannot presume to know Satoshi's "vision". Regardless, Satoshi's "vision" is irrelevant.
• One cannot presume that their interpretation of Satoshi's scripture is shared by everyone. Regardless, his scripture is irrelevant.
• By design, nobody is in charge of Bitcoin, not even Satoshi.

Certainly, Satoshi deserves respect. The impact of his invention and his implementation on the future will be huge, and most of his ideas were good ideas. But, please consider this:

The world of Bitcoin is the result of work done by hundreds of people, and the contribution by Satoshi grows smaller every day. I hope that doesn't bother you.

[rizzlarolla]

I feel that "Fuck Satoshi!" is an appropriate, though crude, response to Roger's question. In my opinion, the disrespect contained in the response is not directed at Satoshi; rather, it is directed at Roger's incarnation and idolatry of Satoshi.
...

Certainly, Satoshi deserves respect. The impact of his invention and his implementation on the future will be huge, and most of his ideas were good ideas. But, please consider this:

The world of Bitcoin is the result of work done by hundreds of people, and the contribution by Satoshi grows smaller every day. I hope that doesn't bother you.

It does bother me.

Satoshi is an idea, a creation.
I suspect it is just as likely the Core dev was saying Fuck the inherant ideas/creation of Bitcoin - We know better.

The contribution of Satoshi should never grow smaller.
With respect, Fuck you.

[rogerver]

I don't think my asking of "What would Satoshi do?" is an Appeal to Authority.
I think it may be a bit of an appeal to the initial promise that enticed every early adopter like myself to get involved with Bitcoin.
In 2011, when almost no one cared about Bitcoin at all, I read Satoshi's white paper and his posts on the forum. I understood, and agreed with his vision, and I spent the next 5.5 years of my life working towards that goal. In about the last year, Satoshi's original vision of a P2P cash system that myself and all the other early adopters expected Bitcoin to become, has been coopted by a group of people who entered the system much later, and seem to have very little understanding of economics or why Bitcoin is useful as money.

https://twitter.com/rogerkver/status/764464403848671236

[iFixBTCmemoryIssues]

Roger Ver hosted a meetup in Santa Clara on Tuesday. Everyone had a great time (including the Blockstream guys and Luke Jr, I hope). At the meetup, Roger recounted a conversation he had a while ago with a developer of Core. Here is a short paraphrasing of Roger's recounting:

Roger: If Satoshi were here and he advocated a bigger block size, what would you do?
Developer of Core: Fuck Satoshi!

As expected, the general reaction to the anecdote was shock and dismay. How disrespectful! How offensive! How blasphemous! That's right I used the B word. I imagine that some people felt that the developer should be burned at the stake.

But, let's step back and consider what was said.

First, I was surprised that Roger, a staunch and outspoken voluntaryist, would actually stoop to an Appeal to Authority. That seems to conflict with what he advocates. Does Roger believe that Satoshi should be in charge of Bitcoin if they/she/he were around? Would Roger follow Satoshi blindly or expect others to follow Satoshi blindly? Does Roger assume that he knows what Satoshi thinks about Bitcoin? In short, What-Would-Satoshi-Do is not something that I would expect from Roger.

Second, I feel that "Fuck Satoshi!" is an appropriate, though crude, response to Roger's question. In my opinion, the disrespect contained in the response is not directed at Satoshi; rather, it is directed at Roger's incarnation and idolatry of Satoshi. These are some reasons why I agree with the developer's response:

• One cannot presume to know how Satoshi feels about the current state of Bitcoin. Regardless, Satoshi's opinion is irrelevant.
• One cannot presume to know Satoshi's "vision". Regardless, Satoshi's "vision" is irrelevant.
• One cannot presume that their interpretation of Satoshi's scripture is shared by everyone. Regardless, his scripture is irrelevant.
• By design, nobody is in charge of Bitcoin, not even Satoshi.

Certainly, Satoshi deserves respect. The impact of his invention and his implementation on the future will be huge, and most of his ideas were good ideas. But, please consider this:

The world of Bitcoin is the result of work done by hundreds of people, and the contribution by Satoshi grows smaller every day. I hope that doesn't bother you.

Fuck off you scamming thieves, you are not hi-jacking Bitcoin.

This is the end of you.

[zju]

The contribution of Satoshi should never grow smaller.
With respect, Fuck you.

Do you worship the inventor of the wheel? The discoverer of fire? I didn't think so.

[zju]

Fuck off you scamming thieves, you are not hi-jacking Bitcoin.

This is the end of you.

I appreciate your thoughtful response. It is a clear demonstration of your intelligence.

[Skin_in_the_game]

There's a high probability albeit not certainty that Satoshi is Nick Szabo. Analysis of his writing style, his historical place in the field, his work on bitgold and so on. He is certainly the most likely candidate BY FAR. So you can ask him directly what he thinks just don't mention Satoshi.

From what I get from his Twitter account, he is mostly supportive of devs, seemed to take the opposite direction of Gavin and has always warned against hard forks.

And by the way, for all we know the dev who said "Fuck Satoshi" could be Satoshi himself (I'm not saying I believe he is, just there's more chance he would be than say CRAIG WRIGHT whom many big blog supporters wanted to believe was SATOSHI). If you think logically, If Satoshi is not Szabo, there's defintly some chance he could be a Bitcoin dev. Or you think the creator, with 500k+ coins is going to stand somewhere and completly ignore Bitcoin ? Makes total sense. There's a high chance that least one the very early dev or adopter is related in some way to Satoshi.

Funnily and for the anecdote, I remember sharing a conversation with Roger . years ago when at that time his most likely candidate was Theymos I know he didn't care who is Satoshi, he liked the idea of Bitcoin.

I can't agree that devs don't understand Satoshi's vision. Undestanding the economics of Bitcoin doesn't mean we don't have to deal with the technical reality. And many people who share Roger's Australian economics background are in favor of small blocks or neutral to the issue. Also is it's much easier to understand simple economic logic than the advanced computer knowledge currently necessary to further Bitcoin. Not saying the devs have strong economic background, I don't know them.

From what I have read from him, overall Greg Maxwell (devil incarnate) seems to be one of the smartest guys around and he seems to have established a reputation for things like decentralization and privacy.

Also I can't agree with you Roger when you say you "signed"for something different. You bought an asset, you didn't sign anything and nobody promised you anything. Bitcoin was not different back then. If you underestimated the technical or the community issues, that's another question. Bitcoin is still a project and I'm sure Satoshi himself has changed his position on many things since the white paper one way or another.

Also I don't see why you obsess about the blocksize when Bitcoin has other equally or more pressing flaws, on the privacy concern for example.

[iFixBTCmemoryIssues]

There's a high probability albeit not certainty that Satoshi is Nick Szabo. Analysis of his writing style, his historical place in the field, his work on bitgold and so on. He is certainly the most likely candidate BY FAR. So you can ask him directly what he thinks just don't mention Satoshi.

From what I get from his Twitter account, he is mostly supportive of devs, seemed to take the opposite direction of Gavin and has always warned against hard forks.

And by the way, for all we know the dev who said "Fuck Satoshi" could be Satoshi himself (I'm not saying I believe he is, just there's more chance he would be than say CRAIG WRIGHT whom many big blog supporters wanted to believe was SATOSHI). If you think logically, If Satoshi is not Szabo, there's defintly some chance he could be a Bitcoin dev. Or you think the creator, with 500k+ coins is going to stand somewhere and completly ignore Bitcoin ? Makes total sense. There's a high chance that least one the very early dev or adopter is related in some way to Satoshi.

Funnily and for the anecdote, I remember sharing a conversation with Roger . years ago when at that time his most likely candidate was Theymos I know he didn't care who is Satoshi, he liked the idea of Bitcoin.

I can't agree that devs don't understand Satoshi's vision. Undestanding the economics of Bitcoin doesn't mean we don't have to deal with the technical reality. And many people who share Roger's Australian economics background are in favor of small blocks or neutral to the issue. Also is it's much easier to understand simple economic logic than the advanced computer knowledge currently necessary to further Bitcoin. Not saying the devs have strong economic background, I don't know them.

From what I have read from him, overall Greg Maxwell (devil incarnate) seems to be one of the smartest guys around and he seems to have established a reputation for things like decentralization and privacy.

Also I can't agree with you Roger when you say you "signed"for something different. You bought an asset, you didn't sign anything and nobody promised you anything. Bitcoin was not different back then. If you underestimated the technical or the community issues, that's another question. Bitcoin is still a project and I'm sure Satoshi himself has changed his position on many things since the white paper one way or another.

Also I don't see why you obsess about the blocksize when Bitcoin has other equally or more pressing flaws, on the privacy concern for example.

You idiots talk ass all day.

Bitcoin, the protocol itself, works fine.

Like SWIFT, you build the technology and let it work its magic for decades besides maintaining security.

You don't let some amateur conman developers come in and try to advance the technology overnight. Why don't you call up a CEO of his bank and tell him you are changing the way their payment system works and he will have no say in it. He will tell you to fuck off, like I am.

Fuck off

[rogerver]

Also I don't see why you obsess about the blocksize when Bitcoin has other equally or more pressing flaws, on the privacy concern for example.

I agree that there are other pressing issues, but scaling is the most urgent.
If I had to rank a couple of the top ones:

• Scaling
• Privacy
• Ease of use
• others

I know those are all very general, and there are lots of pieces required to improve each of those subjects.
Ultimately if Bitcoin is only used by a small number of people, the other aspects aren't very important anyhow.
I want to build a system to rival the USD, the Euro and the Yen. 1MB blocks don't allow that to happen with the current technology.

[Skin_in_the_game]

Well I have the same goals and concerns but 8mb or even 50mb doesn't bring us there either. Which is not a reason to stay stuck at 1mb if we can upgrade safely for sure!

Can I ask you what makes you think that the blocksize is the reason for the slow bitcoin adoption?

I can give you many reaons that seem more logical to me.
1/ less potential gains due to the much bigger market cap
2/ much more money needed to move the price
3/ ease of use and even more pressing wallet security concerns and general fear of hacking
4/ mostly negative media coverage
5/ privacy concern which threatens fungibility
6/ its such a revolution and human being are very conservative especially if they don't see an immediate enormous benefit that is also easy to move to.
7/ money is an institution and complicated, most people are financially ignorants.

Do you sincerly think that fees of 20 cents or 5 cents are more important that any othese reasons?

I think your scenario is that mainstream adoption will push the price but my perspective is that bitcoin will be big (in $) before it is widely used. We are too early to worry so much about scaling on the blocksize (especially since scaling is progressing through protocol innovation). Once Bitcoin is big, the mainstran usage will happen more naturally. We are not even sure yet how people will use it.

Rich people are the one you need to convert. 1/ they are smarter in accumulating/protecing capital and have more financial knowledge.
2/ they actually have $$ to move the needle. 3/ most succesful revolutions come from the 'bourgeoisie'. The rest of tje people just follow.


Finally let's see the reality of the technical situation. The people in charge are doing a good job and are shown to care about many of these concerns. I don't think you are on Mike Hearn side of the privacy and decentralization debate. I'd rather have the current proven devs continue to develop scaling outside of the blocksize than having random unproven people or worse people who don't care about these other pressing issues .

If one day we really need blocksize scaling, we can hard fork if it's not done by that time. Doing this now is useless. And I think you are wasting your time by focusing too much on scaling and not on other issues.

[rogerver]

The things holding back adoption currently are:

• High fees per transaction. (I'm regularly paying tens of dollars for one transaction)
• Slow confirmation times
• Double spending windows of hours or days
• Big businesses that may want to bring Bitcoin to tens of millions of users all at once, wont because they know the network can't handle it. (I know for a fact that this is already happening)

All of these issues can immediately be solved by a block size increase, and it arguably will help increase the decentralization of bitcoin.
Increasing the block size today would allow the ecosystem to continue to grow while longer term scaling solutions are worked on.

Most early Bitcoin users received their first bitcoin from a faucet.
Due to high network fees Bitcoin faucets are no longer possible.
That is a huge tool for spreading bitcoin that is no longer available to us because of the current Core team not allowing Bitcoin to scale in a timely manner.

[Skin_in_the_game]

Tens of dollar for a transaction seems very unusual, I think we can both agree that this is not representative of the average price paid per transaction. But it's interesting nevertheless. Could you give more explanations about these transactions ?

Some other issues you are mentionning are also related to the lack of adaptation of the ecosystem of wallets to the blocksize, most of them are severly lacking in how they manage fees.

I agree overall that these things are holding back bitcoins but not necessarily more than everything else I mentionned.

As for the big business wanting to bring bitcoins to tens of millions ? Would you have more specific examples ? Because like this it sounds more like a random justification why they are not in it. If I'm not doing something, I need to find a reason not to do it. If I'm not buying Bitcoin, I must find a reason to explain why I'm not doing it. Today it's the blocksize, yeserday it was silk road, and tomorrow it will be something else, until doing business with Bitcoin becomes an evidence you can't ignore.

At this stage, most countries don't even have a proper exchange trading bitcoin with their national currencies with a minimum of liquidity. I feel like we are far from mainstream usage no matter what.

[iFixBTCmemoryIssues]

Tens of dollar for a transaction seems very unusual, I think we can both agree that this is not representative of the average price paid per transaction. But it's interesting nevertheless. Could you give more explanations about these transactions ?

Some other issues you are mentionning are also related to the lack of adaptation of the ecosystem of wallets to the blocksize, most of them are severly lacking in how they manage fees.

I agree overall that these things are holding back bitcoins but not necessarily more than everything else I mentionned.

As for the big business wanting to bring bitcoins to tens of millions ? Would you have more specific examples ? Because like this it sounds more like a random justification why they are not in it. If I'm not doing something, I need to find a reason not to do it. If I'm not buying Bitcoin, I must find a reason to explain why I'm not doing it. Today it's the blocksize, yeserday it was silk road, and tomorrow it will be something else, until doing business with Bitcoin becomes an evidence you can't ignore.

At this stage, most countries don't even have a proper exchange trading bitcoin with their national currencies with a minimum of liquidity. I feel like we are far from mainstream usage no matter what.

Because you are impatient and would rather steal from people than let Bitcoin gain traction over decades.

[rogerver]

Tens of dollar for a transaction seems very unusual, I think we can both agree that this is not representative of the average price paid per transaction. But it's interesting nevertheless. Could you give more explanations about these transactions ?

Any business that receives lots of payments from their customers will experience this.
For example, if 200 customers send me $10 each for T-shirts, when I go to move all the money, it can easily cost $30 to send the $2000 transaction because it has 200 inputs. Ask any Bitcoin exchange or business operator and they will tell you that it is common for them to send transactions where the fees are more than $10 now. Bitcoin is losing its advantage over banks, credit cards and paypal due to this.

As for the big business wanting to bring bitcoins to tens of millions ? Would you have more specific examples ? Because like this it sounds more like a random justification why they are not in it. If I'm not doing something, I need to find a reason not to do it. If I'm not buying Bitcoin, I must find a reason to explain why I'm not doing it. Today it's the blocksize, yeserday it was silk road, and tomorrow it will be something else, until doing business with Bitcoin becomes an evidence you can't ignore.

Here is the example at hand: Instant Messaging apps.
Different people use different ones, but some of the most popular are:

• What's App
• Viber
• LINE
• Kakao Talk
• Telegram
• Snap Chat
• Many others

All of those above have in the ball park of 100M users.
We know that the parent companies of Viber, and Kakao Talk have already invested in Bitcoin startups, and the founder of Telegram is a big Bitcoin fan.
Currently all of those apps just allow you to send messages, cat photos, and random animation things.
Obviously being able to send and receive money with anyone, anywhere in the world is far more useful than being able to share cat photos with them.
I know for a fact that at least one of the companies above was previously working on bitcoin integration, but put it on hold due to the scaling problems.
If they allowed all of their users to use Bitcoin, the current bitcoin network would be overloaded and it would lead to a bad user experience for everyone involved. The number one problem Bitcoin is facing today is lack of transactional throughput capacity.
The answer given by many of the small block proponents is that we shouldn't be using Bitcoin for payments.

[Skin_in_the_game]

Ok that's what I thought you would be talking about. Unfortunately these multiple input transaction it seems to me are a consequence of how Bitcoin is working and I don't see how the blocksize can solve this since you need to have fees because bandwith storage and processing is not unlimited and free. These type of transaction are always going to be expensive. This specific issue also attracts attention to the current lack of off chain solutions for small payments. But I agree it's defintly made worse by the current small size of blocks.

As for the messaging apps, I guess you are talkin about Telegram? Because I don't see the others touching Bitcoins for now. I'd like to know more about their reasoning. My feeling is that if the blocksize/limited scaling is a factor, there are probably other factors such as dealing with people getting their coins stolen and who is responsible, as well as things like the cut Google and Apple take on everything and their their respective curation policies.

And then there's the fact that it's not even sure their user would want that as the only success/actual working example in this area that I know off is Wechat. And that works mainly because you can already pay almost anything in China with tenpay, it's easy to transfer to your bank account and people also used for "alternative" purposes like gamblng. There's actually a crackdown on some of these usages in China atm. I don't think Bitcoin in its current state (Blocksize or not) can offer any of that. Except the gambling part.

[iFixBTCmemoryIssues]

Tens of dollar for a transaction seems very unusual, I think we can both agree that this is not representative of the average price paid per transaction. But it's interesting nevertheless. Could you give more explanations about these transactions ?

Any business that receives lots of payments from their customers will experience this.
For example, if 200 customers send me $10 each for T-shirts, when I go to move all the money, it can easily cost $30 to send the $2000 transaction because it has 200 inputs. Ask any Bitcoin exchange or business operator and they will tell you that it is common for them to send transactions where the fees are more than $10 now. Bitcoin is losing its advantage over banks, credit cards and paypal due to this.

As for the big business wanting to bring bitcoins to tens of millions ? Would you have more specific examples ? Because like this it sounds more like a random justification why they are not in it. If I'm not doing something, I need to find a reason not to do it. If I'm not buying Bitcoin, I must find a reason to explain why I'm not doing it. Today it's the blocksize, yeserday it was silk road, and tomorrow it will be something else, until doing business with Bitcoin becomes an evidence you can't ignore.

Here is the example at hand: Instant Messaging apps.
Different people use different ones, but some of the most popular are:

• What's App
• Viber
• LINE
• Kakao Talk
• Telegram
• Snap Chat
• Many others

All of those above have in the ball park of 100M users.
We know that the parent companies of Viber, and Kakao Talk have already invested in Bitcoin startups, and the founder of Telegram is a big Bitcoin fan.
Currently all of those apps just allow you to send messages, cat photos, and random animation things.
Obviously being able to send and receive money with anyone, anywhere in the world is far more useful than being able to share cat photos with them.
I know for a fact that at least one of the companies above was previously working on bitcoin integration, but put it on hold due to the scaling problems.
If they allowed all of their users to use Bitcoin, the current bitcoin network would be overloaded and it would lead to a bad user experience for everyone involved. The number one problem Bitcoin is facing today is lack of transactional throughput capacity.
The answer given by many of the small block proponents is that we shouldn't be using Bitcoin for payments.

Big companies knocking on Bitcoins door, being turned away by easily fixable problems with-out having to transact off-chain.

If we can get 5 fortune 500 companies signed up to use Bitcoin, we will gain good traction. For this, we will need to use something other than a Core roadmap and keep fees as low as possible if not free