According to the famous bitcoin early adopter and investor, most Classic supporters have not made any significant contribution to bitcoin industry and development. Even those who did, have their biases.

When asked by Brave New Coin about the current discussion between the proponents of Bitcoin Core and Bitcoin Classic, Trace Mayer said that he would really be happy if he “could say that there were major players on both sides,” but there is no real alternative.

According to Mayer, Bitcoin Core is supported by an overwhelming majority of developers, “bunch of people who had contributed thousands and thousands of lines of code to bitcoin,” while their opponents are mostly those who have not done any code writing, at least not in the last three or four years – and bitcoin coding is now “more complex, more professional and requires more skill than three years ago.”

He admitted that Gavin Andresen is really an expert on bitcoin but even Jeff Garzik, according to him, could not provide a single bitcoin code line he had written. And creating good code, Mayer says, is the only thing that makes an opinion of a bitcoin developer worth listening to because the bitcoin developers’ community is a “brutally honest meritocracy”.

Mayer believes that Brian Armstrong of Coinbase and other vocal defenders of Bitcoin Classic show a “cavalier attitude” that seriously endangers bitcoin, with its $6 billion in market cap and “who knows how much in colored coins and other assets on top of it.” If a solution seems efficient, it should be implemented into bitcoin but only after long and careful testing. And a mechanical block increase is “a really bad idea”.

Mayer criticises Coinbase and Circle for their desire to centralise everything which, according to him, runs counter to the very spirit of bitcoin. Gavin Andresen works for Coinbase and Mike Hearn for Circle, which explains their partiality to the block size change.

Responding to those who criticise the Bitcoin Core team, Mayer answered:

“I would like there to be different four or five development teams, all approximately evenly skilled, and I could choose, like, which particular implementation I wanna do… but who is going to fund it? …How many millions of dollars are going into Bitcoin Core every year?”

Trace Mayer is an early bitcoin adopter who was promoting bitcoin as early as in 2010. He helped develop Armory wallet and invested in Kraken and Bitpay.

Alexey Tereshchenko