Why I support Bitcoin Unlimited and bigger blocks

[rogerver]

1. I own a relatively large number of Bitcoin.

2. As such, I'm profoundly interested in seeing the value of that asset appreciating in value.

3. Many events over the past 18 months have proven to me, and most rational, objective/unbiased observers that a blocksize increase will lead to the following two key benefits:
1. Accelerated Bitcoin user adoption.
2. An INCREASE in the value of my Bitcoin investment portfolio.

4. Given this, I will continue to act prudently and confidently to affect this beneficial change.

5. Also, please understand that I speak for several other large holders of Bitcoin, too. We love Bitcoin... full stop. We are determined to see Bitcoin deliver on the great promise it holds for both the world at large, as well as it's promise for our respective investment portfolios.

6. Any other action on my part, or that of my Bitcoin-heavyweight compatriots would simply be self-destructive.

[grnqrtr]

Bye Bye

[iFixBTCmemoryIssues]

1. I own a relatively large number of Bitcoin.

2. As such, I'm profoundly interested in seeing the value of that asset appreciating in value.

3. Many events over the past 18 months have proven to me, and most rational, objective/unbiased observers that a blocksize increase will lead to the following two key benefits:
1. Accelerated Bitcoin user adoption.
2. An INCREASE in the value of my Bitcoin investment portfolio.

4. Given this, I will continue to act prudently and confidently to affect this beneficial change.

5. Also, please understand that I speak for several other large holders of Bitcoin, too. We love Bitcoin... full stop. We are determined to see Bitcoin deliver on the great promise it holds for both the world at large, as well as it's promise for our respective investment portfolios.

6. Any other action on my part, or that of my Bitcoin-heavyweight compatriots would simply be self-destructive.

We are determined to see Bitcoin deliver on the great promise it holds for both the world at large, as well as it's promise for our respective investment portfolios.

[jordan]

Thank you, Roger. The intellectual gymnastics that Core goes through to defend their position is mind-boggling.

They change the narrative to whatever suits their cause in the present moment. They refuse to believe Bitcoin can succeed with its original blue print, yet somehow they're in charge of the reference implementation!! It's crazy!

Their convoluted solutions may never materialize, although I have nothing against them trying to develop them. It's just that their vision is not the Bitcoin that I signed up for. Bitcoin is perfectly workable as it is if it's allowed to grow at a steady rate!

I applaud what you're doing! The majority of industry, miners, and users applaud along. It's the die hard Core supporters, censors, & Core proper that are holding us back.

[justusranvier]

It's depressing how much collective memory has been lost over the last few years.

Read through this thread, and then check the post dates.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=145590.0;all

We've always known the current congestion problems would be best avoiding by raising the block size limit early, before the limit started causing problems.

The people who are fighting to prevent a congestion solution now are the same ones who fought to keep us from acting proactively back when we could have avoided a crisis.

[coin@coin]

1. I own a relatively large number of Bitcoin.

2. As such, I'm profoundly interested in seeing the value of that asset appreciating in value.

3. Many events over the past 18 months have proven to me, and most rational, objective/unbiased observers that a blocksize increase will lead to the following two key benefits:
1. Accelerated Bitcoin user adoption.
2. An INCREASE in the value of my Bitcoin investment portfolio.

4. Given this, I will continue to act prudently and confidently to affect this beneficial change.

5. Also, please understand that I speak for several other large holders of Bitcoin, too. We love Bitcoin... full stop. We are determined to see Bitcoin deliver on the great promise it holds for both the world at large, as well as it's promise for our respective investment portfolios.

6. Any other action on my part, or that of my Bitcoin-heavyweight compatriots would simply be self-destructive.

Have to say this sounds a bit egoistic, clearly this is not for the benefit of the community but for the benefit of a few big holders.
Also how can you be sure that increasing blocksize will:

1. Accelerated Bitcoin user adoption.
2. An INCREASE in the value of my Bitcoin investment portfolio

???

Have you thought about the risks associated with a potential fork? The potential to have 2 coins running on two different chains? Hasn't what happened with Ethereum offered any evidence that a split community (acting more like 2 political parties) could cause miners to collude, support whichever coin is more profitable on the day, cause hashrate instability on one chain or the other or both? And all the security issues that may arise with a less secure chain if miners were to act erratically? And all the pumpers and dumpers trying to promote one version or the other as it happened with Ethereum?

If Bitcoin fails in the mind of potential new adopters after increased litigation between the 2 factions... And/or people steering clear and even selling off their stakes and moving onto something new (Zcash, Dash, Monero or whatever turns them on)... How about merchant adoption? Wouldn't that fall drastically too because of network instability? What if double spends are easier to perpetrate because of network instability?

I mean there are a lot of question marks if there was to be a similar split as in Ethereum. And a lot of uncertainty for the future and viability of Bitcoin.

If it were to fail, will you take responsibility for promoting a split in your name, for your own gain and the one of the 1% friends of yours?

Is this just propaganda because you are already thinking of moving onto something else? You could simply sell off your BTC and invest in other tokens, the motivation for this doesn't seem to be a noble one, I'm intrigued how can one of the biggest supporters of Bitcoin just a few years back is now happy to risk it all for personal gain.

I'm personally terrified by all this, maybe it's me, I guess we all live and learn. Really hope this is me being over paranoid however hope you are right for the rest of the community that doesn't own a considerable amount of BTC and are just happy with the way things are progressing: slowly but surely.

[Skin_in_the_game]

1. I own a relatively large number of Bitcoin.

2. As such, I'm profoundly interested in seeing the value of that asset appreciating in value.

3. Many events over the past 18 months have proven to me, and most rational, objective/unbiased observers that a blocksize increase will lead to the following two key benefits:
1. Accelerated Bitcoin user adoption.
2. An INCREASE in the value of my Bitcoin investment portfolio.

4. Given this, I will continue to act prudently and confidently to affect this beneficial change.

5. Also, please understand that I speak for several other large holders of Bitcoin, too. We love Bitcoin... full stop. We are determined to see Bitcoin deliver on the great promise it holds for both the world at large, as well as it's promise for our respective investment portfolios.

6. Any other action on my part, or that of my Bitcoin-heavyweight compatriots would simply be self-destructive.

Hello,

To me it seems that most of these points contain the same argument: You support Unlimited in good faith because you think it will lead to an increase in users adoption and price. I don't think anyone would doubt that, it's been well known forever that your are a top10 Bitcoin inverstor. I don't see why anyone would question the fact that you have Bitcoin best interests at heart considering your amount of skin in the game.

Considering your portfolio of Bitcoin company, I don't remember what's the lionshare of it, I guess blockchain.info, bitpay, kraken, purse and a few others. For most of these, their market cap might not be clearly correlated to Bitcoin's price (which is the main focus of most Bitcoin's investors except the tiny minority that seeded/funded the early companies). Moreoever some business models might be actually "free-riding" on artificially cheap/unsustainable transactions fees. So on this point, I would say your interests are not necessarily completly aligned with other Bitcoin inverstors and therefore less relevant.

There is a few point I would like to discuss: First the fact that you are a top Bitcoin holder doesn't mean that you know best what will lead to the highest price longterm for Bitcoin. It means that you are very bold: you went big (allin?) early. that you have an unshaking faith in Bitcoin as you kept most of them for the ride, and that you were smart/knowledgeable enough to recognize the value proposition early.

Now on the negative side:
- It might also mean that you have a tendency to see the world in black and white, this is also reflected in your Rothbardian ideals. You could miss some nuances and you might show a propension for maximalist positions.
- It might also mean that you didn't see some of Bitcoin's shortcomings (related to scaling or the difficulty of achieving consensus for example). I remember you were promoting Bitcoin's transactions as free back then, a fact that simply can't happen in reality as the block reward is but by half every 4 years and the mining "subsidy" disappears.
- And finally it might also mean that boldness must often at the cost of a lack of prudence. Maybe you don't see some of the dangers that others see ahead in an approach that would lack enough caution (Bitcoin unlimited). Also you are ok with and might be pushing for a hard fork. This might be a solution but is clearly again a "bold" move to say the least.

I admire your courage, maybe some of these Bitcoin big holder peers don't have as much as you... But I don't think you can claim their support unless they have made their position known. Publicly, I only know of Olivier Jansens and maybe David A Johnston ? (not a well known figure but he claims to be an early investor on his twitter profile). My guess is there's also plenty of big holders and Core's side.

To me the big problem is that if we can find big investors on both side of Core and Unlimited, most of the technical expert community belongs to Core. This fact can't be ignored. These are people who for some of them have been working on the idea of a cryptocurrency for two decades! Thinking we should get rid of them and replace them by a small number of unknown devs seems careless to me. Especially considering that Core is pushing Bitcoin forward at a pace that satisfy many other holders. Bitcoin is not a random tech company, it's a highly advanced decentralized network which few people at present can push forward. It seems to me that the people who have fallen out (Gavin for example) are now simply not knowledgeable/skilled enough anymore to make new contributions on the technical side. Even outside of the direct contributors, respected figures like Bram Cohem or Nick Szabo seem to be on Core side. I think for people who want to invest in bold devs with the "break things and fix them later so we can move forward faster" mentality while having some technical chops (seemingly lacking in Unlimited), Ethereum is the perfect value proposition.

Many propositions to scale Bitcoin seem dangerously close to Dunning Kruger and the reality at the moment is that nobody has shown themselves capable of producing any significant work outside of Core.

In conclusion, I would say that there are some people more on Core's side who (like me) respect you and believe in your good faith but think that you might not have the right technical background to assess the risks of the approach you are defending. I think some people are better suited to be early founders/investors. Bitcoin needed someone like you from 2011 to 2013 and your contributions have been invaluable but today it is $10B, it involves so many more people and the technical expertise required to push it forward is always increasing as the low hanging fruits are disappearing. I'm not saying at all you should disappear but I just hope you also see these other points.

[TomZ]

Bitcoin Classic and Bitcoin Unlimited as well as Bitcoin XT are all implementing the same scaling solution where the protocol limits are removed and the individual node operator as well as the miners tell the world what their limits are and miners can decide on the block size based on what makes the market happy and what allows the blocks to stay constrained enough to still get income from fees. This allows the block size to become a market equilibrium where the individual miner has full information about what his competitors are allowing in size.

The market now has a choice, Bitcoin Core or anyone else. This is equivalent with "1MB limit" or "market defined limits".

I know its easier to have only one correct choice, but my vote would be to choose "not-core"

[TomZ]

Have you thought about the risks associated with a potential fork? The potential to have 2 coins running on two different chains? Hasn't what happened with Ethereum offered any evidence that a split community

You can't compare Bitcoin to Ethereum because the fundamentals are different. Specifically the difficulty retarget time. A minority chain would not survive in Bitcoin.

The idea that we'll have a hard fork and that the original chain continues with some miners is not really going to happen. It is in fact described as a myth on https://bitcoinfactswiki.github.io/Hardfork

[OscarMurphy]

Thank you Roger!

Please do not be discouraged by any negative feedback you may receive from the Blockstream/BitcoinCore camp, it's quite obvious their intentions are completely different then what was intended for Bitcoin.

Luckily we have someone such as yourself to step up and try and make a difference.

As a significant Bitcoin holder myself I am very thankful you have stepped up to help thwart Blockstream's agenda.

Keep up the great work! You have an army of people supporting you.