uncletammy

I came here to say that. Here's a super informative thread laying out those events from the perspective of one of the Decred developers.

https://old.reddit.com/r/decred/comments/6wxueo/your_best_pi...

TLDR: Smart contracts on BTC were intentionally strangled because it would necessitate bigger blocks.

At the same time, BTC core devs were gearing up to start their sad push in creating artificial scarcity on a perfectly functional blockchain by reneging on the agreement they made to increase the block size.

They traded their ideals to get rich and all that momentum was lost. Instead of peer to peer cash, we're all left with a thousand useless ponzi schemes and a handful of promising coins that can't work together to actually achieve Satoshi's goal.

There's not a good reason. Of all the cryptocurrencies, BTC is one of the worst for this use case.

Once again Ron Wyden seems to be one of the only members of congress who sees the dangerous path we are on with respect to data privacy and our government's Orwellian overreach. I would quit job tomorrow to work on this guy's presidential campaign.

> ... undocumented workers are fodder for exploitation

There are a number of good arguments for stopping undocumented workers but I don't think "keeping them from being exploited" is a very good one. Most undocumented workers in the US come from countries where their next best alternative is being exploited by cartels.

A much better solution is to overhaul our immigration system to make it effortless to get immigrants on the books and paying into our system while we deal with the much harder problem of finding them a forever home

Both Facebook and Instagram are down for me. I'm in Central Texas. Maybe we'll luck out and it will stay that way forever.

I'm not sure why you're being downvoted but you're exactly right.

Love or hate Roget Ver, you'd be hard pressed to find any historical accounting of Bitcoin's rise to fame where he's not mentioned in a favorable light.

Gavin Andersen was the best steward that Bitcoin core ever had. He managed to keep the more toxic contributors at bay for a long time although they eventually forced him out through highly unethical means ( https://www.livebitcoinnews.com/core-developer-calls-andrese... )

> Their subsequent ousting by a group that basically acted like trolls

Gavin thought so too ( https://cointelegraph.com/news/former-bitcoin-cores-gavin-an... )

> to sabotage Bitcoin's plan to hard fork to remove the 1 MB block size limit, and thereby prevent it from becoming a ubiquitous electronic cash

Here's part of the story as told by one of the more honest core devs: https://blog.plan99.net/the-resolution-of-the-bitcoin-experi...

edit: spacing

> Because evolution itself is randomness unchecked.

Eloquently put

> Bitcoin cannot fulfill its original promise to be electronic cash.

Not as long as the Bitcoin core developers are actively sabotaging BTC's development so Blockstream can sell you the solution. Bitcoin was hijacked and it may never recover.

> Segwit has been implemented

Segwit adoption plateaued around 60% and has been steadily decreasing ever since. It's a piss poor substitute for real scaling by increasing the block size like Satoshi had intended. Even if it had been a good idea, the core devs butchered the implementation.

> The lightning network is growing.

Not even close. The lightning network is the ultimate vaporware. It was promised as the solution to Bitcoin's scaling problems NINE YEARS AGO ( https://twitter.com/starkness/status/676599570898419712 ) and is to this day considered unsafe and "experimental". It failed to deliver on just about every promise it made. Even the core devs have abandoned it for Liquid.

> No mention of sidechains like Liquid

Finally, we get to see the reason that a handful of Bitcoin core devs have been holding Bitcoin hostage for ten years. Liquid is a centralized Bitcoin sidechain that allows exchanges to pay extra in order to clear their transactions faster than would otherwise be possible on Bitcoin's now neutered base layer. Liquid was recently criticized for being fundamentally insecure after this embarrassment ( https://www.coindesk.com/blockstreams-liquid-network-sent-8m... )

> No mention of Taproot.

Wake me when it's merged. The sad truth is, ever since some of the core devs formed Blockstream and hijacked BTC, they have added almost no new features on the protocol level. The only one they were willing to work on is Segwit and only because it solidified their power over BTC. They have no incentive to make BTC better. If BTC worked well, nobody would want to buy Liquid.

This is exactly how I feel about my friends/family having Facebook apps on their phone. I didn't consent to giving my contact info to Facebook. I wasn't given a choice.

There have been three or four of them in total. I believe this is the one you're talking about though.

https://www.kut.org/post/chief-manley-says-black-man-critica...

This should be the top response. Just under it should be a DDG staffer telling us they will be turning this config option off by default starting with the the next release.

I've been counting down the days until it's okay again to use <tables> . I think I have a lot more counting to do ...

It's like whack-a-mole but the moles keep coming back with armour

This isn't the first time Reddit has tried something like this.

Back around 2015 they hired a dev called Ryan X Charles to build a Bitcoin based rewards system into Reddit.

https://ryanxcharlestimes.com/fix-reddit-with-bitcoin-7da3f8...

It proved to be a difficult task because it was right about the time that the Bitcoin core devs started actively discouraging Bitcoin's use in payments. This paired with a new investment round at Reddit resulted in the project being abandoned.

I do believe if they had seen this project through, Reddit would be in a much more healthy state right now

Ron Wyden for president 2024

"It's okay because 'fraud prevention' " isn't a good enough reason to horde my user's data without their consent.

Furthermore, a heartfelt promise from a payment provider to never sell my data means about diddly squat to me.

I use stripe.js in a number of my projects but I've never trusted it. Looks like my fears were justified.

Instead of loading it on startup, I always load the library as the last step before the checkout flow is initiated. Here is a working example of how to do this for anyone who's curious.

https://jsfiddle.net/167ajcbw/

> ...leaves control in the hands of a small number.

Yes but it would still provide a considerably larger number of controllers (and with more diverse interests) than our current system.

> In practice this is both hard to do (denominator issue) ...

Excellent point here. It would be incredibly difficult.

Here's a thought though ...

Warning! I'm about to talk about cryptocurrency. Everyone might want to put on their futurism hats and keep their downvoting finger at bay, at least until I finish.

This problem wouldn't be very hard at all to solve in a world where the bailout currency has similar properties to blockchain based cryptocurrencies. Company shares could be issued as an "airdropped" token to everyone holding the currency at the block height during which the bailout is agreed upon. Those tokens could be used directly to vote on shareholder matters and in a way that is fully fair and transparent.

Yes I know. We are still many decades (and maybe centuries) out from a world in which cryptocurrency actually works how it's meant to. One day though...it's gonna be glorious.

Alright, I'm done. Downvote away.

I wholeheartedly agree with this sentiment but I don't trust "elected representatives" to fairly represent my interests.

I want voting shares issued directly to me in an amount equal to my financial contribution (tax dollars / currency devaluation) towards their bailout.

> The music industry got their shit together and even the most copyright-paranoid artists are on Spotify...

To be fair, unless their play count rivals Taylor Swift, those artists probably still aren't making much money. I have quite a few friends who are professional musicians and this is a common complaint.

Im nit saying spotify isnt a positive thing for consumers (and maybe also artists in the long run) but there's definitely a tradeoff to having one platform to rule them all.

I would love to know why you regularly eat raw meat

I think you're looking for this: https://f-droid.org/

This is idiotic fear mongering from one of the many parasitic BTC investors who lost all interest in building sovereign money the second their pockets started filling up with fiat.

They perceive BCH to be a threat to their pocketbook and they should. If BCH succeeds at building p2p electronic cash, there will be no need for BTC to exist.

Here's an idea. Go help them make it better. Fixing our broken ass network and the (bad) incentives that keep is afloat is one tough job. We need all the help we can get!

You can start here: https://github.com/brave

> If by cash you mean Tether tokens, maybe.

Bingo. For those curious, here is a very thorough history of Tether and how it's use brought chaos to the entire cryptocurrency ecosystem. It was used as a money printer to prop up an insolvent (and criminal) exchange while creating insane volatility in the markets. It is still alive today and continues to be a massive liability for the entire industry.

https://www.kalzumeus.com/2019/10/28/tether-and-bitfinex/

> If you want cryptocurrencies to succeed, you need to make them widespread as a form of payment.

This! It's unfortunate that the most well known cryptocurrency failed to grasp this and refused to prioritize scaling so that it could accommodate demand.

At the end of the day, if a cryptocurrency can't be used like cash, it has nothing to offer over existing solutions.

Another hero who died too soon...

The answer to this was meant to be Bitcoin, hence the title of the whitepaper "Bitcoin: A peer to peer electronic cash system". Unfortunately there is a lot of money being spent to keep that goal from being realized.

If you really want to see "cash on the internet" I would advise you to do some research and find the cryptocurrency that best resembles it, then help build it. It will be an uphill battle the whole way.

One shouldn't take information from random websites as fact, this included.

If it did turn out to be true though, it would explain a lot about the company culture and the antics of their employees.

Only in crypto will you find company executives aggressively trolling large companies in their industry simply for disagreeing with them.