Bitcoin: At A Crossroads

Unless you're entrenched in the Bitcoin community, you could be forgiven for being totally oblivious to the war that has been unfolding within the digital currency's community.

At the heart of the debate is the Bitcoin blocksize issue. Bitcoin has a serious problem right now - that is - the rising number of unconfirmed transactions and rising fees. Anyone that says this is not a problem, is lying through their teeth. The network is capped right now at 7 transactions a second - which can easily be alleviated simply by raising a parameter which creator Satoshi Nakamoto temporarily placed, and clearly advised that it can be raised to meet demand... For now it doesn't even need to be raised much to alleviate the pressure of this choking pipeline. But to stand by and do nothing, while this technical bottle-neck chokes under pressure, stinks of industrial sabotage. To keep the blocksize at a 1MB limit (and therefore 7 transaction per second cap), means that only transactions with the highest fees get processed. And as price and popularity of Bitcoin grows, so do the transaction fees, which have already climbed to astonishing heights, and will only continue to do so. There certainly is a viewpoint that believes this isn't a bad thing, and it comes from a rather dominant entity from within the Bitcoin community - Blockstream. It is blockstream that funds Bitcoin Core - the primary Bitcoin development team. To be pro-transaction fees (and costly ones at that), is to have an elitist attitude. This changes the very essence of Bitcoin from being a "peer to peer" technology, to a settlement layer. A coin for the rich, and a coin for the banks. Perhaps its not so surprising given that this agenda is pushed by a centralised company to start with... But the true cost of this debate falls on the victims of the political assault, where every social engineering ploy known to man is being hurled. John Blocke, recently posted an article ever so clearly (better than I could) articulating the status quo. No need to mince words, or play mind games, because the position is sound. You can read this article by clicking here. John writes about the constant "shifting of goals posts", and the ever changing arguments that are thrown to keep the debate from ever moving forward. There is no doubt whatsoever, that there is a major social engineering assault in the works, and one that is financially driven at that too. "Goal posts" only move when there is no backbone to an argument. It is political device used to sway those who have less understanding of the technical lingo, by throwing jargon and attacking or censoring any opposing view. On full display is a smear campaign designed to discredit big-blockers as "Satoshi worshipping" religious nuts. Ironically, those that support Satoshi's view, do so because Satoshi himself represents decentralization in the first place... Big blockers are the last people to put any form of diety, or governance on bitcoin. It is the very thing big-blockers are fighting. But at the very heart of all the 'mumb- jumbo', is the obstruction employed. They'll keep throwing all the arguments, the shifting of goal posts, the endless rhetoric, fear mongering and censorship, all in order to prevent the one thing from happening - Bitcoin scaling. Richard Dawkins once wrote: Suppose you are an intellectual impostor with nothing to say, but with strong ambitions to succeed in academic life, collect a coterie of reverent disciples and have students around the world anoint your pages with respectful yellow highlighter. What kind of literary style would you cultivate? Not a lucid one, surely, for clarity would expose your lack of content. I urge newcomers and stakeholders to be wary of the political games that are being played by Blockstream, and to push for a rational solution to the over-filled blocks. Eli - Developer and Analyst. M.IT & B.S