I got a lot of feedback on my last article, both positive and negative. Most of the negative feedback was in the form of conspiracy theories about me, rather than addressing the issues raised. That’s disappointing. Here are a couple that seemed more popular than the rest.

I sold the last batch of my coins in December, a few days after the second “Scaling Bitcoin” conference. Since that time I haven’t had any positions in any cryptocurrencies, long or short, and no way to make profit or loss off anything that is happening to Bitcoin.

Some people suggested that there is some sort of banker conspiracy, because after I privately concluded Bitcoin wasn’t working I took a job with a startup that’s looking at how to apply distributed ledger technology in the existing financial system (R3 CEV). This isn’t a secret: there were stories in the press about it in November. It was also mentioned in the New York Times article. I didn’t mention this in my post because R3 is not a Bitcoin company, or even a cryptocurrency company, and there is no “BankCoin” or “R3Coin”. So this is really nothing to do with them and conspiracy theories are just a waste of time when there are more serious issues to consider. Todd McDonald said it best on the official R3 blog:

The resulting kerfuffle has led to a few quite detailed (and somewhat enjoyable) conspiracy theories on The Internets, mainly saying that R3 instructed Mike as part of some coordinated ‘attack’ on Bitcoin. If only we had such control over a brilliant mind like Mike. He is a programmer after all … … How can the whole thing not make you tired, no matter what ‘side’ you are on? And as I have mentioned before, this concept of one side or one approach ‘winning’ over another, or that there even is a contest, baffles me. Success for R3 (or any of the handful of companies in this space) does not need to come at the expense of Bitcoin. It is more likely that traction for either camp would be a massive positive for the other. Put simply: I personally own (a small amount) of bitcoin AND also think that Bitcoin holds little merit for large, regulated financial institutions as it is currently constructed. In the words of William Goldman, “nobody knows anything” but it doesn’t stop us all from giving it a go.

I see things the same way. Bitcoin competes with some things banks do but a big part of banking is about lending and trading, and those activities would still occur even in a world where Bitcoin was the one global currency. It’s not a zero sum game, banks and Bitcoin co-exist, and R3’s fate is independent of Bitcoin’s.

So to be redundantly clear: I wrote my article because I knew the story in the NYT was coming (and had told my colleagues about it) but wasn’t sure what it’d say, so I wanted a chance to put things in my own words. I wasn’t asked to write, or paid to, nor can I financially benefit from doing so in any way. The timing was chosen by the NYT.

By the way, if you’re interested in smart contracts, block chains, ledgers, etc, Todd’s blog post has some links to some other interesting reads from around the web.