Full of lies and desperation of someone who risked his entire reputation on something and lost; and now strops around like a petulant child.

Bitcoin Core has absolutely every intention of addressing block size in a way which will not compromise the security properties of Bitcoin. The issue is far more complex an nuances than Mike likes to present and scalability is a very complex issue for Bitcoin with block size being the least interesting property, but one which has the potential to change the security model and properties of what Bitcoin stands for.

A Short List of Lies:

Having a set flag day does not take away miner voting, miners vote by upgrading. Additionally, having an expiry mechanism is as simple as, if by flag day we don’t have 95% adoption of the hardfork, abort. It’s a line of code. Mike claims miners will switch to BIP101 in December if Core doesn’t release a block size increase, this is a complete lie. Truth is miners have outright rejected any controversial change that does not include Bitcoin Core where the vast majority of technical experts reside. Huge exchanges have also stated they will not accept BIP101 outright. Clearly Mike is trying a game of poker here to frighten people. The Scaling Bitcoins conferences are not specifically about blocksize, but about how to scale bitcoin efficiently and without risk. Blocksize proposals were off the table at the first meeting in order to bring decorum to the debate and explain the many other aspects of scalability. The second meeting is all about specific scalability proposals which block size is a part of, but it is not the exclusive remit of the conference. The Liquid sidechain is not a competitor to Bitcoin, it will liquidity between exchanges and thus increase arbitrage. That in turn will help reduce price volatility since huge spreads wont be able to form exchanges (like right now there’s a 5–10% spread between Chinese and Western exchanges). Mike’s presentation of how things get merged in Bitcoin Core is completely wrong. Read https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/blob/master/CONTRIBUTING.md Bitcoin Core is not under the control of two people, but Wladamir does have the final say on what gets merged or not and has quite rightly said he wont merge controversial changes to consensus related code. That means, consensus changes, like CHECKLOCKTIMEVERIFY or blocksize must have wide technical consensus.

It’s clear Mike does not like the simple fact that the vast majority of technical experts in the Bitcoin field, contribute to Bitcoin Core and not other projects. Not only that, downstream users, rely on Bitcoin Core because they know it has the expertise and stability. XT has nothing, in the short time of it’s existence, hardly any changes have been merged, and what has been has deep technical flaws. Meanwhile Bitcoin Core has made literally hundreds of improvements.

Companies are not going to follow a renegade fork and in the end, they are going to trust the technical expertise of those who can provide long term support and have a proven track record in the field.