[HostFat]

Suggerirei di darsi una letta anche a questo:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1164828.0

I rarely post anything on the forums because I don’t speak English as fluently as I want, but this situation is an extraordinary case, so I think I can’t resist the temptation to write about it in my broken English

What happened with all this Blockstream, BIPs & XT mess is just a solid presentation of Bitcoin’s weakest sides and flaws.

Here are three main problems that I see:

1. Blockstream is a cancer for Bitcoin

Personally, I can’t (or I don’t want to) believe that just $21M, which Blockstream has got from a bunch of investors, will actually ruin Bitcoin as we know it now. The problem is that many people just don’t understand the simplest thing: if someone has invested the money in something, they want to get it back in the future. So one way or another, Blockstream is a commercial company, which wants to benefit from the Lightning Network (or the sidechains).

It is absolutely obvious that the smaller the block size is, the more money Blockstream will make. Let’s theorize for a moment, that BIP100 has been implemented and miners have voted for 1 KB blocks, so 1 block = 1 transaction. That would be the perfect situation for Blockstream, because as they can take fees in the LN, they would be the only entity who is economically motivated to pay a very big fee for creating a clearing transaction in the blockchain. So the entire blockchain from this moment would consist of single clearing transactions.

Now let’s get back to the ground and suppose that we will have 1 MB or 2 MB, or even 10 MB blocks implemented by BIP100, but this size will not rise in the future. Well, now it all depends on how big will Bitcoin grow. If in 2020 we will have 1.000.000 transactions each 10 minutes and the same 1 MB blocks, the calculation is simple and not really different from 1 KB blocks. Let’s suppose that Blockstream will get $0.05 for each transaction on the LN as a fee, so for a million LN-transactions the total fee would be $50.000. Now, if Blockstream will use the blockchain for the clearing transactions, they could use the entire 1 MB (~1.500 transactions) for this purpose. $50.000 / 1.500 transactions = $33 per transaction. So no one will have an incentive to push a transaction for $33 in the blockchain while there will be an option to use a sidechain for $0.05. I understand that these calculations are awfully approximate, but this is the economic model of Blockstream. And this is the end of Bitcoin’s “be your own bank” as we know it know, because Blockstream is a centralized thing, you know: “Sorry, you are banned from the Lightning Network because you haven’t verified your ID”.

And I have another thought about Blockstream I can’t stop think about. How in the world do you think they have convinced the investors (who merely understand technical details of Bitcoin protocol) that sidechains is what is needed for Bitcoin? Right, they said exactly the following: “Bitcoin has a flow: the block size is limited and can’t be increased, because it’s hardcoded. We solve this problem!”. Now it’s not surprising that investors must be puzzled about what’s going on now with all this FUD, because they weren’t told that there were other solutions. And that’s exactly why there is so many censorship on the main Bitcoin boards nowadays: if the investors realize that people don’t want to use sidechains, they will not invest more money. Since the Blockstream team consists of the Core’s developers… It’s that simple.

2. It is not that obvious who decides the future for Bitcoin. Despite the fact that in theory it is the “economic majority” who should decide the future for Bitcoin, miners still can destroy it in the process

Many people theorize that the majority of miners will not do anything stupid (like accepting 1 KB block size limit or raising the 21M bitcoins limit) because “the price will momentarily go down to zero and the miners will lose their money”. Yes, they will. And you will too. Or may be they do something stupid and the price will just slightly go down. The global problem is if for any reason in the world the majority would want to “commit a suicide”, they actually could do it. For example, they could be confused by the greedy guys like Blockstream… Anything. And there is literally nothing anyone could do to stop them.

3. The censorship on top of the fact that many people don’t understand how Bitcoin (and the Bitcoin consensus in particular) works

Well, I was very confused when I got to know that Theymos was banning all the “irrelevant” discussions. I don’t know whether he is paid by Blockstream or he isn’t, but that’s not the problem. The problem is that here in the Russian section there are almost no discussions about the Blockstream problem at all! Everybody just thinks that “Bitcoin XT will ruin Bitcoin, because it is a fork, so the best option is to sit still and have 1 MB blocks”. That’s all. And that’s because all articles here in the Russian section are translated from the western media. So the people who doesn’t speak English just can’t dig into the problem.

And, in my opinion, the problem is not with the Russian section. I believe that there can be a similar problem in the Chinese one. And this problem is a real one, because all top miners are from China.

I don’t know what can I do about it

Well, I believe if XT won’t succeed and Blockstream’s solution will get accepted, I will have only one option: to sell my coins, as it is the only way I can “vote”. That’s sad, but I don’t believe that sidechains are the true Bitcoin.

And as the conclusion, I’d like to say that it’s all about corruption. Well, here we have corrupted Core developers, who develop a commercial project on top of Bitcoin. Bitcoin was invented as a replacement for traditional money to “fix” some economical problems. If you look at the big picture, it would be interesting to think, that at some point in time, fiat money (which were backed by gold) were invented to “fix” some problems too. And in time, some people corrupted the idea of fiat money with the current banking system. My point is that if Bitcoin can be broken by corrupted people, it will inevitably be broken. And my biggest fear it has already happened.