Here are the opinions of people who wanted to go on the record.

I prepared some slides for Pantera Bitcoin explaining why I don’t support Core and their roadmap. You can view them here: http://docdro.id/NG1sbVq

Roger Ver, Early investor in Bitcoin, Blockchain.info, and Bitpay

Any contentious hard fork would be highly value-negative to Bitcoin.

Ben Davenport, Cofounder of BitGo

The Bitcoin community needs an attitude shift if Bitcoin is to continue to be relevant. It’s not just the block-size issue. During this phase of cryptocurrency development, the ability to iterate quickly and add features is important if you want to avoid being overtaken by new altcoins. Right now, Ethereum looks like a far better platform to me.

Eli Dourado, Director of Technology Policy at Mercatus

The scariest aspect of this whole debate is how fragile the incentives in Bitcoin are when hashpower can so easily be concentrated.

Alex Morcos, Bitcoin Core Developer and cofounder of HRT and Chaincode

Don’t fork bitcoin.

Ryan Selkis, Managing Director of Coindesk

Bitcoin needs both on-chain and off-chain scaling if it’s ever to become a mainstream technology. Off-chain scaling is essentially a transaction volume amplifier; it can only amplify on-chain transactions to a certain extent. As such, in order to maximize the gain from off-chain scaling, larger blocks will be needed so that more second layer solutions can anchor into the blockchain.

Jameson Lopp, Software Engineer at BitGo

Increasing the block size would mean that top miners would be incentivized to push the block size even more, to push out some of their competition. Some miners wouldn’t have the computing power, or it wouldn’t be cost efficient for them to process larger and larger blocks, so they would retire.

Repeat that process slowly, kicking out a low percentage of miners each time, and you would have taken over Bitcoin. You would own and control it. It’s true that even if that happens, miners couldn’t do certain things — for example they can’t fake a transaction for you. But they could double spend, meaning that the currency is worthless.

Luis Cuende, Cofounder at Aragon

It’s tough to see the Bitcoin community fight so rabidly. I personally don’t think any option that increases the risk of miner centralization is a good answer.

Kathleen Breitman, Cofounder and CEO of Tezos

A Bitcoin fork is necessary to unlock the real power and scale of the technology, complex time are ahead, we are talking about the mother of the cryptocurrencies and the birth labor it’s not always easy, but always have a resolution, good or bad, and the life continues. “In the long history of humankind (and animal kind, too) those who learned to collaborate and improvise most effectively have prevailed.”

― Charles Darwin

Jorge Farias, CEO at Cryptobuyer.io

The fork will probably damage bitcoin’s reputation short term, but I feel that long-term we will learn a great deal from this “fiasco”.

In my opinion the “right” chain may not be that one that gains the most following. I am referring to the ETH-ETC split. The morally right chain is classic, while ethereum is more desirable by corporations and investors who feel safer by having the option of their money returned when things go wrong. Overall, I think a block size increase is the best way forward.

Albert Szmigielski, Fintech writer and Blockchain researcher

From what I’ve read, I do feel SW is the right path forward, but miners need something as well. By expanding (beyond the SW-alone increase) blocks a bit more I think there is room to align both sides.

Sean Moss-Pultz, CEO of Bitmark

Segwit is the best way to move forward.

John Bailon, CEO and Cofounder of sci.ph

I would like to see a compromise between miners and Core such that the miners are comfortable with the road map.

Nick Tomaino, Principal at Runa Capital

The miners that support Blocksize Unlimited are killing the goose that lays the golden egg for them. They will be the biggest losers as the bitcoin price will crash following such a hard fork.

Ranga Krishnan, VP Technology at Skuchain

A year ago, we had no implemented mechanism for scalability. Today, we do and it is ready now: segregated witness. This is just the first step in a long line of work to do. But we need to take the first step as well as set a roadmap for future steps. The time is now.

Mike Belshe, CEO of BitGo