Blast from the Past

It is funny when we look at ourselves in the past and we see how much we have changed. Sometimes the change is physical, a normal change through time. But other times, the change is deeper than that. A change of heart about old ideas, that perhaps are laughable today. But some changes are for the worst, fostering decay rather than growth.

This is the case of Lil’ Charlie Lee (/u/coblee), creator of Litecoin and one of the most beloved Crypto-Keynesians. A two-year old Reddit thread from the early days of the scaling wars between small blockers and big blockers show a different side to Lee. A side before he became entrenched in the small-blocker dogma. He even presented the idea of Satoshi Nakamoto, creator of p2p electronic cash, that expanding the block size is possibly a good thing!

Even playing devil’s advocate, he came up with a really good argument. And the thread exploded with supporting comments about the validity of the big block argument.

One Slippery Chickun

Over the years, though, it seems that Charlie has been changing sides constantly. Here in Venezuela, we call this type of person a “guabinoso”. It’s one who plays both sides to see who will gain traction and never takes an actual stand based on any coherent or fixed values. Again, this is a thread from long ago when the debate that gave birth to the p2p cash version of Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash, was still raging all over the internet.

Charlie looked so much better at that time when he was flexible enough to at least consider the idea of big blocks being useful. Never mind that this has always been the solution to the problem of scaling bitcoin, as the last comment states. Such bold disregard for the gospel of Blockstream would get you excommunicated today!

From Devil’s Advocate to Shitcoin Riches

Anyway, why he later became a 1 MB warrior and BTC supremacist (that nonetheless created and successfully orchestrated an altcoin pump-n-dump to adoring masochistic LTC bag-holders) only he knows for sure. But this piece of bitcoin history is pure joy and a reminder that to understand the present and future we must often look to the past.