The Bitcoin Blocksize Debate Has Not Even Fully Begun Yet

The director of international marketing of China’s largest miner HaoBTC spoke with Bitcoin.com following his tweet stating that the Core developers have “won” the Bitcoin blocksize debate.

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Chinese Miners ‘Fractured’ on Blocksize Issue

Following a petitionary statement to developers to implement the July 2016 hard fork, agreed at the Hong Kong roundtable event by members including HaoBTC, the director of international marketing Eric Mu made the comment in response to a Reddit call for updates.

They won — Eric Mu (@muxiaoliang) August 28, 2016

The July statement has since disappeared from HaoBTC’s website. However, while Mu’s own opinion to be one of resignation to a definite result, the situation is far from resolved.

“I think that the West tend to see the Chinese miners as one entity with the same interest and a unified voice,” Mu said speaking to Bitcoin.com today.

They are not […] they are fractured […] Many are either not aware of or don’t care about which route Bitcoin takes to scale.

Mu’s comments suggest a lack of uniformity among Bitcoin’s biggest mining sector, something which regardless of statements to the contrary cannot be overlooked.

“Whichever side wins out, most prob will just follow along,” Mu added when asked whether the latest events reveal a more unified line on the side of miners.

This was a repeat of earlier comments on Twitter, where Mu added that other parties could be easily manipulated to form a consensus:

Speaking from the perspective of Cn miner, most don't care; the few who do r easily colluded, alienated or cajoled — Eric Mu (@muxiaoliang) August 28, 2016

Mu: Core Devs ‘Tone Softened’

Nonetheless, he suggested the Core line had most recently changed tack on the weight of the past year’s proceedings – at least a little.

Mu:

My observation is that among the strongest critics of Bitcoin core/Blockstream, the tone has softened.

When asked about what specifically could have caused this “softening,” Mu agreed with the suggestion that the debacle over the DAO could have made all parties overly wary of the implications of a hard-fork.

“I think it contributed to the sentiment shift,” he added.

Gavin Andresen in June called for an outright removal of block size caps, stating that “nothing bad will happen” should this go ahead.

“Yes, let’s eliminate the limit, nothing bad will happen if we do,” he wrote on Reddit. “And if I’m wrong, the bad things would be mild annoyances, not existential risks, much less risky than operating a network near 100% capacity.”

Mu meanwhile said he remained “agnostic” about the future.

“I don’t think anyone has a good idea regarding bitcoin’s future and how people want to use it and even who are using it. So it is almost impossible to say which of the alternatives is good for bitcoin in the long run,” he concluded.

What do you think about Eric Mu’s comments on the Chinese position in the blocksize debate? Let us know your thoughts in the comments section below!

Editor`s note: In this article, we have stated that Erik Mu is the CEO of HaoBTC however Erik Mu is the director of international marketing at HaoBTC. The CEO at HaoBTC is Mr Wu Gang. We are sorry for this mistake and confusion. We have made all the necessary corrections.

Images courtesy of Forbes, shutterstock