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Comment by ihuman | Hacker News Reader

How is this different then what happened with Bitcoin XT and Bitcoin classic?

XT/Classic was a mere skirmish compared to this.

On one side you have Chinese miners and one developer gunning for segwit2x because it gives them a significant advantage related to their hardware.

On the other side you have the other dozen or so core developers who want a more conservative approach. As a side-effect this version levels the playing field for miners.

I'm not sure what you are talking about. Because what I see from my point of view is a dozen of Blockstream employees pushing for segwit, with barely no support from the community nor the miners. And on the other side I see a growing majority of miners, a growing majority of the community asking for a simple block size increase, wich is a matter of 10 lines modified, compared to 5 000 lines and a great bunch of complexity that segwit bring.

But I'm probably wasting my time with you, looking at your comment history you seems to be a typical pro-Blockstream troll.

"But I'm probably wasting my time with you, looking at your comment history you seems to be a typical pro-Blockstream troll."

Is there any need for this kind of incivility? Around here we don't call people with differing opinions a 'troll', we just respect the differences. This could easily have been written as "based on your posting history, I don't expect to change your mind".

The stupidity of not raising the block side and pushing for segwit and side chains (or LN) as a way of scaling has been debunked so many time that still believing in it is like believing the earth is still flat. Come on, even a newcomer seeing full blocks, skyrocketing fees, growing transactions backlog will understand how brain dead it is to not increase the block size...

I know there are still people believing in Blockstream because of the intense censure and (paid?) trolls in /r/bitcoin and bitcointalk.org. But this bullshit show is going for more than 3 years now, if you still can't see through that, I'm sorry, but you deserve to be called a "pro-Blockstream troll". If calling things the way they are is incivility, then I'm happy to be incivil!

I find it sad (but not at all surprising) that this is the state of the Bitcoin community. The level of discourse for what is supposed to be a technology that is billed as "liberating money from the whims of governments" has neatly conformed to exactly that of the current state of political discourse. Everyone who disagrees with you is a shill/troll or an idiot. Adding math and "decentralization" doesn't magically prevent humans from being humans.

I'm sure given just enough time the "community" will structure itself into a perfect replica of a modern bureaucracy.

edit: I'm not just extrapolating from this one post a gander over at /r/btc or /r/bitcoin shows the same lovely trend

How sad that a human-created and human-run endeavor turned out to be merely human after all.

Yes, that is the one-line throw away dismissal of the whole affair if you innately believe that everything we do will always devolve to the status quo.

I reject this form of behavioral nihilism and prefer to believe that ideas can exact change in this world[1] and move people up and out of the status quo, and lament the failure of even efforts I think were doomed from the beginning.

[1] Which isn't to say I reject the notion that a large portion of people are just out to get theirs and to hell with the rest

I am bullish on Bitcoin, even knowing this potential upcoming split. But as early as 2010 one could read criticism that power would become centralized in miners, it was only logical that if their interests and the communiity's diverged that they would have and exert this extra and very human influence.

I'm disappointed that you concluded a valid argument with an ad-hominem attack. It's not helpful.

Why is it an either-or situation? Couldn't they increase the blocksize and use side chains?

Miners don't want side chains because that reduces their fees. Miners want Bitcoin to be VISA where they are the conglomerate that controls it.

"it gives them a significant advantage related to their hardware"

What are you talking about? Pretty sure this is false. Please don't say ASICBoot.

Segwit2x has the hash power to end this.

Also, with XT there wasn't really n alternative scaling solution to a blocksize increase, as far as I know. This time we have SegWit as an alternative and with the threat of UASF, the community is being forced to compromise on SegWit + a 2MB hardfork.

Hash power follows value not the other way around. For some reason a lot of people seem to think the entire economy follows the miners.

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