Somewhere in a poorly lit warehouse in a tropical jungle next to a hydroelectric dam in central China, a servant tentatively approaches his master…
—Did you hear the news, Emperor Wu ?i The creator of BitTorrent and Level 3 Mage in the Dragon’s Denii is making a stink on social media over the fork war.iii
—(spits out coffee) Wha— What did you say ?!
—Apparently, Herr Cohen is using other peoples’ platforms to take a stand against our disingenuous and selfish reasons. And this could just be the beginning. He’s threatening to make even more of a fuss in the future… or maybe even move onto the next buzzword!
—But he loves “scaling”. If he’s willing to give that up, he must really be serious about this fork thing! How did you hear about this protest?
—Miners hear about every protest, no matter how small.
—Oh, right, I remember.
—You haven’t heard the half of it, Emperor Wu. Herr Cohen says that if you don’t stop the war today and accept his ScaleCoin, he’s going to . . . to . . . I’m sorry, I can’t say it out loud. It’s just too terrifying.
—Say it, damn it! I’m the Emperor!
—All right! If you don’t stop the war . . . he won’t tweet anything for the rest of the week.
—Fork the chain.
—But, Emperor! Shouldn’t we talk about this?
—Dagnammit I said fork the chain!
With apologies to Simon Rich.iv
- Jihan Wu is co-founder of BITMAIN, one of the larger public-facing Bitcoin miner manufacturers who hasn’t yet gone full retard. ↩
- Bram Cohen :
The thing [Jihan Wu]’s accused of isn’t violating a patent, or even using asicboost. It’s blocking segwit for disingenuous selfish reasons.
Hurr much ? The only ingenuous reasons are the altruistic ones donchaknow. ↩
- More properly fork “war”. Stop wasting your time with this childish UA/UASF/SW/LBGTBBQ shit already. Even a bi-monthly glance in the direction of the whole charade is tiresome. Your handlers aren’t paying you enough. Honestly. A fork isn’t happening any time soon. And if it is, it’ll be sunk economically faster than you can say “Classic”. ↩
- Simon’s is one of the better pieces you’ll find at the New Yorker – that great American cartoon book sullied by so much half-baked prose. ↩
So segwit is bad, ok. Have any of you explained why somewhere? There’s the obvious reasons like “bitcoin must not and can not change”, or “bitcoin is not for the poor”, etc., where I think we all agree.
Any thoughts on LN?
I think you understand perfectly well what’s wrong with both, but perhaps you’re not yet comfortable with the answer ?
Bitcoin can certainly change – and I’ve little doubt that it eventually will – but the questions of where, when, and how are not “consensus”-driven anymore than they’re “dev”-driven or “reddit”-driven. These are political and economic decisions that will be governed by political and economic actors. Some of these actors will work behind the scenes, some in broad daylight, but all to ensure that hard currency stays out of the hands of the unworthy, which is to say, their enemies.
If you’re simply on the sidelines, it’s up to you to figure out which way the winds of change are blowing and react accordingly. Nothing more.
>“bitcoin is not for the poor”
What is considered “rich” or “poor” in Bitcoin terms? less than 1 BTC? will fees ever be high enough that people with less 1 BTC see it as impractical to use BTC? how do you measure this?
It’s a good question. In Bitcoin terms, being “rich” is a matter of not only how many you have, but also how you store them (there’s a night and day difference between Coinbase and paper wallets), your ability to enter and exit positions, and your understanding of the fundamental technology.
[…] had a no-nonsense vibe that’s almost unknown amongst double-speaking cosmopolitans who read The New Yorker and The Economist. Thankfully, I don’t think I’ve seen the last of […]
[…] be this one, which was apparently sufficiently inflammatory for Bram Cohen to outright block shinohai, who […]
[…] (ie. the alert reader) go about distinguishing the truly rich from the merely #hoodrich (ie. the pretenders) ? How can you spot the difference ? Let’s see if we can use some unnamed pro athletes to […]