The enormous loss in wasted effort
Posted: Tue Mar 08, 2016 8:18 pm
There has been a recent trend of exchanges and merchants publishing blog posts expressing their disagreement with the current limitations of the bitcoin network. The most recent one is from Bitpay's Stephen Pair, who supports BIP101 and reviewed the results of the recent Bitcoin Roundtable discussion. Shortly before that, Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong railed against the Core developers, calling into question their character and ability to serve as leaders of bitcoin development. That was not Armstrong's first post - he has made several before expressing the exact same concerns. Even Gavin Andresen repeats himself on this topic over and over.
I live by the philosophy that one should always know what he intends to accomplish before taking an action. If I were interviewing for a job, I would know exactly what salary is acceptable before walking into the interview. When I write a feature for our pool, I examine exactly how much profit the feature is projected to bring in. When I travel somewhere, I know what my general goals are for the trip. As a result of these decisions, I don't look for jobs that pay poorly, I don't write features that will not earn us more profit, and I don't show up at a location and then get bored because I have no idea what is there. I plan for the possible outcomes of events based on these decisions. If I were to go to an interview and was offered a low salary, I would decline. When people ask for us to modify the website with certain types of features, we explain why it isn't in our business interest to do so. If I found myself on vacation with a day of extra time, I would know what type of experiences I wanted to have.
Many people do not seem to review the possible outcomes of their actions before doing things. Brian Armstrong's blog posts could be intended to have a few outcomes: they could bring people to Coinbase's website after reading the blog, making him more money. They could damage the reputation of the Core developers. They could convince miners to switch to Bitcoin Classic. They could convince users to switch to Bitcoin Classic (which is not helpful). They could simply be intended to be interesting reading.
Whatever the intent of these repeated posts by these exchanges, it seems to me that the people writing them are not considering what they intend to accomplish. Since these posts are not causing any change at all, they are wasting their time. In fact, wasted time and money is the largest problem with cryptocurrency right now. Armstrong likely wasted more than $10,000 by attending that conference in airfare, hotels, car rentals, opportunity cost of other business, his salary, his health insurance costs, writing that recap post, and so on. And what did he get out of it all? Did he make any progress whatsoever towards any plan? Was there even a plan to begin with?
It's time for a wakeup call. The discussion over this ridiculous issue has been occurring for ten months. During that time, the greatest number of miners that ever supported a larger block size has been all of 4%. The size those 4% support will barely give the bitcoin network a few more months even if they succeed. Not one Core developer has been convinced to take immediate action on the issue. Few of the miners who are the only people who make a difference speak English, so they can't even read these posts. Most of the posts don't make it through to the censored areas where people who are unknowledgeable about the situation are visiting.
Let's review these "scaling conferences" that are repeatedly held. Has any real action come out of even a single one of these conferences? How much time, money, and opportunity cost of extremely highly-paid people has been wasted in attending these events? The amount easily reaches into the millions of dollars. Has even one person who actually matters in the debate changed sides as a result of all this waste? Has anything of consequence that will be widely accepted actually gotten developed during this period? Will it ever be possible to continue bitcoin development now that the sides are so firmly entrenched that the Lightning Network is dead on arrival?
I understand the purpose of having discussion on issues. That said, it is now very clear that no amount of discussion will resolve this issue. The sides are deadlocked, and bitcoin is failing. It is important to recognize these simple facts because people have the opportunity to spend their resources building things, instead of continuing to devote time and money to this intractable problem.
While Armstrong has been making his blog posts, Poloniex (one of his competitors), made over 200 in profit Saturday through trade fees on astronomical Ethereum volume. Today, their profit will likely be in the 110-120 range. This is a huge amount of money for an exchange that, 1.5 years ago, had just a few bitcoins moving through it.
The bottom line is that while people like Armstrong and Pair and Andresen continue to waste their time and resources in what has become a failing part of cryptocurrency, other people are making technological and economic progress. The Ethereum developers do not have a limited blocksize and do not spend all of their time arguing with each other. If you don't like Ethereum, then DASH, NXT, Monero, and others continue to work together, push forward, and spend their time on productive things. Even when the Core developers do produce something forwards-thinking, it is quickly copied and merged into many coins that do not have such negative people involved. These other projects do not have theymos and the Core developers involved, DDoS attacks are useless because the blocksize is not an issue in the first place, and new people are welcomed for fresh opinions and insight.
Companies in the cryptocurrency industry are being presented with a choice. The cutting edge has clearly moved elsewhere. Brian Armstrong, Stephen Pair, and Gavin Andresen, among others, continue to waste their effort trying to convince intransigent people rather than innovating in a space that welcomes their contributions. Cryptocurrency is being held back by people who refuse to move on and use their energy to create great things. It becomes clearer every day that bitcoin is being left in the past, and it is a shame that so many are closing themselves off from where the greatest possibilities lie.
I live by the philosophy that one should always know what he intends to accomplish before taking an action. If I were interviewing for a job, I would know exactly what salary is acceptable before walking into the interview. When I write a feature for our pool, I examine exactly how much profit the feature is projected to bring in. When I travel somewhere, I know what my general goals are for the trip. As a result of these decisions, I don't look for jobs that pay poorly, I don't write features that will not earn us more profit, and I don't show up at a location and then get bored because I have no idea what is there. I plan for the possible outcomes of events based on these decisions. If I were to go to an interview and was offered a low salary, I would decline. When people ask for us to modify the website with certain types of features, we explain why it isn't in our business interest to do so. If I found myself on vacation with a day of extra time, I would know what type of experiences I wanted to have.
Many people do not seem to review the possible outcomes of their actions before doing things. Brian Armstrong's blog posts could be intended to have a few outcomes: they could bring people to Coinbase's website after reading the blog, making him more money. They could damage the reputation of the Core developers. They could convince miners to switch to Bitcoin Classic. They could convince users to switch to Bitcoin Classic (which is not helpful). They could simply be intended to be interesting reading.
Whatever the intent of these repeated posts by these exchanges, it seems to me that the people writing them are not considering what they intend to accomplish. Since these posts are not causing any change at all, they are wasting their time. In fact, wasted time and money is the largest problem with cryptocurrency right now. Armstrong likely wasted more than $10,000 by attending that conference in airfare, hotels, car rentals, opportunity cost of other business, his salary, his health insurance costs, writing that recap post, and so on. And what did he get out of it all? Did he make any progress whatsoever towards any plan? Was there even a plan to begin with?
It's time for a wakeup call. The discussion over this ridiculous issue has been occurring for ten months. During that time, the greatest number of miners that ever supported a larger block size has been all of 4%. The size those 4% support will barely give the bitcoin network a few more months even if they succeed. Not one Core developer has been convinced to take immediate action on the issue. Few of the miners who are the only people who make a difference speak English, so they can't even read these posts. Most of the posts don't make it through to the censored areas where people who are unknowledgeable about the situation are visiting.
Let's review these "scaling conferences" that are repeatedly held. Has any real action come out of even a single one of these conferences? How much time, money, and opportunity cost of extremely highly-paid people has been wasted in attending these events? The amount easily reaches into the millions of dollars. Has even one person who actually matters in the debate changed sides as a result of all this waste? Has anything of consequence that will be widely accepted actually gotten developed during this period? Will it ever be possible to continue bitcoin development now that the sides are so firmly entrenched that the Lightning Network is dead on arrival?
I understand the purpose of having discussion on issues. That said, it is now very clear that no amount of discussion will resolve this issue. The sides are deadlocked, and bitcoin is failing. It is important to recognize these simple facts because people have the opportunity to spend their resources building things, instead of continuing to devote time and money to this intractable problem.
While Armstrong has been making his blog posts, Poloniex (one of his competitors), made over 200 in profit Saturday through trade fees on astronomical Ethereum volume. Today, their profit will likely be in the 110-120 range. This is a huge amount of money for an exchange that, 1.5 years ago, had just a few bitcoins moving through it.
The bottom line is that while people like Armstrong and Pair and Andresen continue to waste their time and resources in what has become a failing part of cryptocurrency, other people are making technological and economic progress. The Ethereum developers do not have a limited blocksize and do not spend all of their time arguing with each other. If you don't like Ethereum, then DASH, NXT, Monero, and others continue to work together, push forward, and spend their time on productive things. Even when the Core developers do produce something forwards-thinking, it is quickly copied and merged into many coins that do not have such negative people involved. These other projects do not have theymos and the Core developers involved, DDoS attacks are useless because the blocksize is not an issue in the first place, and new people are welcomed for fresh opinions and insight.
Companies in the cryptocurrency industry are being presented with a choice. The cutting edge has clearly moved elsewhere. Brian Armstrong, Stephen Pair, and Gavin Andresen, among others, continue to waste their effort trying to convince intransigent people rather than innovating in a space that welcomes their contributions. Cryptocurrency is being held back by people who refuse to move on and use their energy to create great things. It becomes clearer every day that bitcoin is being left in the past, and it is a shame that so many are closing themselves off from where the greatest possibilities lie.