AgoristView on Nostr: That debate with Guy was actually with Steve Patterson who helped Roger write the ...
That debate with Guy was actually with Steve Patterson who helped Roger write the book. Roger is similarly insufferable tho.
He was an early & consistent promoter of Bitcoin, but he sold it as a way to make nearly free transactions rather than as a secure settlement mechanism. He brought many libertarians to bitcoin. His early dedication to Bitcoin promotion made him "Bitcoin Jesus."
When the blocks started filling up he started promoting an increase in the block size. He had decided he was one of the most important people in Bitcoin (the nickname didn't help) & that anyone who disagreed with him was a threat to bitcoin. He didn't seem to understand any of the technical arguments. He didn't have the knowledge needed to build bitcoin, but he wanted to control how it was built. Strangely behaving almost exactly like an antagonist from Atlas Shrugged.
He made a political alliance with the biggest companies in the space at the time (Coinbase, Bitpay, etc) & with all of the biggest miners. He got them all to agree to a hard fork that would not only change the code, but would also oust the developers who had been working on bitcoin up to that point. It was a social & political effort toward a hostile takeover. Roger basically said this was the intent many times.
Roger & co all felt like they deserved to control Bitcoin. Doing things this way was also going to protect the mining advantage that Bitmain had managed to create & patent for themselves via what was basically a bug. So they were demonstrating that decentralization & a sustainable technological tragectory were not their concern. Roger actually said he didn't really care if Bitcoin became Paypal 2.0
Roger would do things like spin up thousands of nodes on Amazon servers in order to make it look like there was tons of support for his fork, & then someone would attack & show that they could basically all be taken out at once because this was not decentralized & organic support for anything, or because sometimes there was actually a problem with their code.
Eventually the choice was between segwit as a softfork, & segwit with a hardfork that would oust most of the current developers. Roger's camp was basically preventing any upgrade by holding the upgrade everyone wanted (which would also eliminate the mining advantage) hostage as a way to gain control of future development (which also shows a lack of understanding because they wouldn't have really been in control of future development either). Many users decided to run code (a user activated softfork) that would evict any of the miners who didn't support the segwit softfork upgrade. Trading markets showed far more support for the softfork. The miners caved, not wanting to risk their revenue streams.
Roger activated his own fork with code changes as an attack hoping to attract miners away (further demonstrating his own lack of technical understanding & that of his developers). Bitcoin Cash went on to need many other hardforks just to be stable. Roger tried to sell his shitcoin as the real Bitcoin for a long time, & then Craig Wright did basically the same thing to Roger that Roger had tried to do to bitcoin. The politicization of changes opened the door to more political splits.
He was an early & consistent promoter of Bitcoin, but he sold it as a way to make nearly free transactions rather than as a secure settlement mechanism. He brought many libertarians to bitcoin. His early dedication to Bitcoin promotion made him "Bitcoin Jesus."
When the blocks started filling up he started promoting an increase in the block size. He had decided he was one of the most important people in Bitcoin (the nickname didn't help) & that anyone who disagreed with him was a threat to bitcoin. He didn't seem to understand any of the technical arguments. He didn't have the knowledge needed to build bitcoin, but he wanted to control how it was built. Strangely behaving almost exactly like an antagonist from Atlas Shrugged.
He made a political alliance with the biggest companies in the space at the time (Coinbase, Bitpay, etc) & with all of the biggest miners. He got them all to agree to a hard fork that would not only change the code, but would also oust the developers who had been working on bitcoin up to that point. It was a social & political effort toward a hostile takeover. Roger basically said this was the intent many times.
Roger & co all felt like they deserved to control Bitcoin. Doing things this way was also going to protect the mining advantage that Bitmain had managed to create & patent for themselves via what was basically a bug. So they were demonstrating that decentralization & a sustainable technological tragectory were not their concern. Roger actually said he didn't really care if Bitcoin became Paypal 2.0
Roger would do things like spin up thousands of nodes on Amazon servers in order to make it look like there was tons of support for his fork, & then someone would attack & show that they could basically all be taken out at once because this was not decentralized & organic support for anything, or because sometimes there was actually a problem with their code.
Eventually the choice was between segwit as a softfork, & segwit with a hardfork that would oust most of the current developers. Roger's camp was basically preventing any upgrade by holding the upgrade everyone wanted (which would also eliminate the mining advantage) hostage as a way to gain control of future development (which also shows a lack of understanding because they wouldn't have really been in control of future development either). Many users decided to run code (a user activated softfork) that would evict any of the miners who didn't support the segwit softfork upgrade. Trading markets showed far more support for the softfork. The miners caved, not wanting to risk their revenue streams.
Roger activated his own fork with code changes as an attack hoping to attract miners away (further demonstrating his own lack of technical understanding & that of his developers). Bitcoin Cash went on to need many other hardforks just to be stable. Roger tried to sell his shitcoin as the real Bitcoin for a long time, & then Craig Wright did basically the same thing to Roger that Roger had tried to do to bitcoin. The politicization of changes opened the door to more political splits.