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Comment by namecast | Hacker News Reader

Mike's resolution was apparently to join up with a consortium of banks back in November:

http://bravenewcoin.com/news/30-top-banks-and-mike-hearn-hav...

Read the article, he was clearly laying the groundwork for this move back in Thanksgiving.

“The current Bitcoin system, I mean the system we actually use today with the block chain, isn't going to change the world at all due to the 1mb limit. … So if I have a choice between helping the existing financial system build something better than what they have today that resembles Bitcoin, or helping the Bitcoin community build something worse than what they have today that resembles banking, then I may as well go where the users are and work with the banks."

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Whether or not Mike might profit from Bitcoin failing (in favor of the alternate cryptocurrencies he works with), the picture he paints is one of inherent instability, mismanagement, and censorship, and it seems like a solid argument. I'm skeptical of where his money comes from, and I don't think he's unbiased enough that I would short BTC just on this article alone. But I'm certainly less bullish on its future than I was.

Which alternate cryptocurrencies is he working with?

See link in the GP:

"The use cases they are looking at and requirements they have cannot be met with the Bitcoin protocol, it just doesn't have the things they need. They are actually spending a lot more time looking at Ethereum than Bitcoin, as it's more obvious how to apply it to their use cases."

Thanks!

Is this comment intended to imply that Mike is being opaque with his intentions? The quote seems pretty much in line with the OP.

No, only that the article is being misleading in it's breathless clickbaitiness.

The quote is absolutely in line with the article; actually including the quote in the article would have rendered the headline 'Bitcoin dev thinks blockchains for banks are way cooler, has thought so for months, and is reluctantly moving on'; that might be a fun article to read, but it's not frontpaging HN.

> No, only that the article is being misleading in it's breathless clickbaitiness.

If you read the entire article, you would not describe it as click-bait.

Additionally, I agree with kevinwang's assessment that the statement by Hearn that you quoted is 100% in line with what Hearn is saying in his Medium article. The key quote is "...the system we actually use today with the block chain, isn't going to change the world at all due to the 1mb limit.". Hearn's Medium article is -actually- ~50-> ~75% about this 1MB limit. (Spoiler alert: it's not a limit of the Bitcoin protocol, but rather a political decision made by many of the Bitcoin Core developers.)

More proof that "clickbait" does not mean "a story that does not deliver on the headline's promise" but rather "something I don't like."

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