There are about a hundred people on Twitter that are negatively discussing Crypto. All of them understand Bitcoin way more than 99% of Bitcoiners and frankly, they would love an efficient decentralized digital currency that works as everyone understands the importance of digital currencies in commerce and the concept of decentralized money.
BTC and Tether are the main reasons that attract criticism and stall innovation in the field of cryptocurrency.
There is no idealism when it comes to Tether. This is why I discussed it in my previous post (Tether ($USDT): An Accident Waiting To Happen) and while indeed there are many decent and kind people in crypto, we can't say the same about Tether or Bitcoin Core.
With BTC it just looks everybody is on board just to make more money with deceptive tactics. BTC is an archaic, incomplete, and underdeveloped network that would have serious adoption levels right now, only if the following commitment wasn't a lie:
I'm wondering what happened, too. So, I kept searching:
Micro-transaction layers (layer 2) are key in this tweet.
The Lightning Network was not just proposed but also developing at that time. The same was the Liquid Network, which was released and announced by Blockstream just two months later.
Obviously, Adam Back wanted to buy some more time to reduce discontent in the part of the Bitcoin community that planned to fork Bitcoin and increase the block size. Scaling Bitcoin at that time would be damaging to Lightning development. But most importantly for Adam Back's Blockstream, it would make the Liquid Network not required at all.
To make this work, recruitment of some devs and people running the top channels of information (bitcointalk, Reddit, Bitcoin Core devs) was required.
The article quoted by Adam Back is this one:
No Blocksize Increase Needed for Years, Argues Bitcoin Core Dev
Interestingly Back named Venzen Khaosan as the writer of this article. Meanwhile, it is posted under a different name on CCN. So, either Back doxxed Venzen Khaosan's real identity, or this is the wrong link he posted. It can happen, some people have fat fingers.
I'm not sure of that era, however, I remember vividly Venzen Khaosan being part of Tone Vays Youtube channel quite often, until the moment Tone Vays decided Venzen Khaosan was a scammer and cut ties with him.
Screenshot from Youtube (fair use: used as proof of what written above).
While the above is also a distraction, I felt necessary to find about the people Adam Back is quoting to make a case. Luke Dash jr is a popular figure for many reasons.
So, Adam Back indirectly quoted an employer of his company to make a case for Bitcoin. Without naming Luke-gr, but the supposed author of this article on Medium where Adam Back found support in his vision for Bitcoin.
The article Back mentioned has as a core topic the ideas of Bitcoin Core dev and Blockstream contractor: Luke-jr.
"Luke-jr does not think an increase in the block size is needed at the present time."
The article mentions the view of a Bitcoin dev under Blockstreams payroll and Adam Back (the CEO of Blockstream) provides this article to validate the claims of his company.
However, Luke-jr, before joining Blockstream had a different view on blocksize. (Source1, Source2).
Luke-jr, August 24th, 2011:
“If a block chain split is to occur, it makes sense to try to fix as many
problems as possible:Replace hard limits (like 1 MB maximum block size) with something that can dynamically adapt with the times. Maybe based on difficulty so it can’t be gamed?
Adjust difficulty every block, without limits, based on a N-block sliding window…
21 million really isn’t enough if Bitcoin ever takes off, even with 100,000,000 units per BTC. Replacing the ‘Satoshi’ 64-bit integers with ‘Satoshi’ variable-size fractions…”
-Luke-jr
This view was shunned by Gregory Maxwell who was always against any block size increase.
Fast forward, a few years later, Gregory Maxwell celebrated BTC high fees with champagnes after fees reached $60 on average and the BTC mempool was full with 300k unconfirmed transactions.
Personally, I’m pulling out the champaign that market behaviour is indeed producing activity levels that can pay for security without inflation, and also producing fee paying backlogs needed to stabilize consensus progress as the subsidy declines
-gmaxwell
In crypto, everything seems to be working.
Even this:
An employee of Blockstream can push Blockstream's agenda and the CEO can quote a reporter writing an article about his employee to justify his actions.
I can't find any words on how the community didn't react to this in 2015.
I think that the title of my article becomes more meaningful now.
There is no question anymore. Blockstream's Liquid Network will be pushed soon as the scaling solution to Bitcoin problems. It was all leading there anyway and even the Lightning Network will be set aside since it is temporary sidechain to attract attention until Liquid matures.
However, pushing something forward with just promotional activities will not succeed. Liquid, will find some small adoption as there are a few developments funded by Samson Mow's private companies and having support from Adam Back.
It doesn't change the fact that everything was planned and moving to this direction, while Blockstream devs and execs were deliberately misinforming and stalling Bitcoin's scaling.
There is no hope that the blind dedication of the BTC bag holders (maxis) will eclipse. BTC will just be a speculative asset and third parties will increase control. BTC will always be about hype and nothing more since this was Blockstream's plan.
In a different world, Bitcoin would have scaled perfectly to meet the wild adoption it was enjoying until 2015 with a solid network able to scale.
It was proven by Bitcoin Cash when it reached a higher transaction count than BTC this year, when Gregory Maxwell, bitter and defeated by this event resorted to calling the Bitcoin Cash blockchain transactions "fake".
Lead Image from: PrimeVideo (modified)
More information & Resources:
Gregory Maxwell Celebrates High Fees and 300,000 Stuck Transactions
No Blocksize Increase Needed for Years, Argues Bitcoin Core Dev
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Wow this is interesting 🤔