Letter to Morgen E. Peck, freelance writer

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Dear Ms. Peck,

Regarding your article dated January 21, 2016 entitled “Bitcoin Needs (Gasp!) Formal Governance“, while I applaud you for correctly identifying both the political and practical levers involved in changing the block size, I would like to call the following points to your attention :

1. Contrary to your assertions, Google developer and would-be saboteur Mike Hearn, for all his alleged “contributions” to Bitcoin, was most certainly an outsider, almost from the word “go.” Despite his “presence at conferences” and ceaseless posturing, the only thing he was truly “tireless” at wasn’t “educating” but rather blathering. At least until he got tired of that too, which just so happened to be when Mr. Nathaniel Popper saw fit to give Hearn the exit he didn’t deserve in the New York Times on January 14, 2016.

Needless to say, Mr. Hearn was politically exiled for his crimes against Bitcoin – which included attempts to increase relay node centralisation as well as to introduce security vulnerabilities into the codebase – and any insinuations that he left the project of his own volition or because of anyone’s failing ~other than his own~ are not only inaccurate but outright misleading. As such, no, Mr. Hearn’s words must under no circumstances and in no conceivable way “be taken seriously,” certainly not any more than your spurious, verging on offensive, correlation between this former agent’s exit stage left and the market price for bitcoin.

2. On the off-chance that you’re still reading, it’s furthermore inaccurate to conclude that it was the miners who sunk Bitcoin XT ; it was The Most Serene Republic of Bitcoin (B, TMSR~) that took sole credit for that kill. What is B, TMSR~, you ask ? Why, an elite organisation that wages war not through the conventional populist means of upvotes and likes, but through financial domination (eg. a) and public humiliation (eg. a, b, c, d). It is not the miners who have “the go button” anymore than they have known identities, for the same reasons and in the same ways. The power for deciding what is included and is not included in the Bitcoin Reference Implementation is decided by The Real Bitcoin Foundation (TRBF) , seated in B, TMSR~ and assembled in #bitcoin-assets on IRC Freenode, where Bitcoin policy is set for the principle reason that this is where Bitcoin businesses – that is, businesses that have no fixed geography, no interaction with fiat, and actually make a profit – convene. It’s what it is.

3. Conferences in Montreal and Hong Kong, as I hope you’ve come to realise first-hand, have no impact on Bitcoin policy. These gatherings are more properly thought of as conventions because they really differ very little from the likes of Comic-Con in that the attendees are merely fans, rather than contributors or businessmen. I mean, ~you~ went, right ?

4. There is no “failure to communicate” amongst “developers.” The failure amongst those wishing to contribute to Bitcoin’s Reference Implementation as maintained by TRBF lies exclusively in the realm of basic literacy – that is, the logs where Bitcoin policy and development decisions are made are a matter of public record and anyone with more than a passing interest in the subject matter can spend the next 6 months doing the required reading, just as I did and just as many others have. Reading the logs for ad minimo half-a-year is not only the fastest way to get up to speed, it’s the ~only~ way. Without completing this homework, one could spend years and years toiling away in abject obscurity and yet be none the wiser for it. It’s actually a bit incredible how many choose to the path of darkness.

5. Relatedly, you need not wait ’til the cows come home for “a formal process for debate and voting, where all of the stakeholders are invited” ; it exists already and its seat is centred where the stakeholders are : in #bitcoin-assets. This is where the voices of the skilled and valuable men and women dedicated to preserving and fostering Bitcoin convene on a daily basis – but it is assuredly ~not~ where the kiddies who bought 0.1 BTC on Coinbase using their mom’s credit card hang out (that’d be Reddit). To visit #b-a and its daily conferences, you don’t even need a plane ticket ; you just need an internet connection and, ideally, a PGP key.

That’s about all that comes to mind right off the bat. If you have any questions at all about any of the aforementioned points, I’d be happy to explore them in more detail.

Thank you for your time.

Sincerely, and on behalf of The Most Serene Republic of Bitcoin,
On this January 29, 2016 at block height 395`645.

Pete D
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P.S. If you want to verify the sig for yourself, your best bet is to do it against this unmunged copy.

P.P.S. If you have coordinates for Ms. Peck other than Twitter, feel free to drop a line in the comments. H/T to Daniel P. Barron for his messagerial contribution.

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