Controlling the Perception that Bitcoin is Broken

Bitcoin doesn’t care. It continues to develop a monetary, financial,  economic, intellectual, and social ecosystem around itself. But a pair  of reports in the mainstream media makes Bitcoin look broken. Arguing  with the messenger is an option. But the better path is to get on with  the hard work of fixing up Bitcoin in perception and reality. Unfair? Perhaps. A Planet Money podcast finding that Bitcoin wouldn’t relay a simple transaction  appears to have been conducted on software that didn’t supply the fee  required under current conditions. In light of such reports, new users  may hesitate to get involved. Their reluctance may retard Bitcoin’s  growth and slow desirable advances in global financial inclusion,  financial privacy, autonomy, and monetary and financial stability, as  well as Bitcoin’s growth in value on exchanges worldwide. For Bitcoin’s technical sophisticates, doing a transaction that way  is just dumb. But there is a good argument that transaction fees were  supposed to supplant mined bitcoins over the next hundred years. Wallet  software and the knowledge to use it in a market for  transaction-inclusion services were arguably meant to evolve over that  span, not in the last year. So if New York Times reporter Nathanial Popper was playing  the role of everyman when he sent his transaction to oblivion, he  represented a large number of Bitcoin users and a huge number of  non-users. The technical and social capital for transaction fees is  still in the earliest stages of development. In his Times piece on mining in China,  Popper sounded notes that must surely rankle Bitcoin Core developers  and their supporters. He characterized them as having “resisted changing  the software,” when in fact they’ve been working hard to optimize the  software for their preferred 1MB blocksize limit. Now Bitcoin is broken – at least in the eyes of millions of New York Times readers and Planet Money listeners. It is looking to them like Bitcoin is a technically constrained payment system that is hard to use. What to do? The expression “never argue with someone who buys ink by  the barrel” needs updating, but its import is unchanged. When the ink  hits the paper or the editor hits “publish,” what’s done is done. Bitcoin Core’s philosophy and plans are not well understood. The  community around Core has not communicated effectively with Popper and  others outside their circle. They have yet to establish in the popular  mind that they have a vision for a fully secure Bitcoin ecosystem with  capacity to rival or supplant today’s dominant payment and monetary  systems. Some in the Chinese mining community may share these concerns. At the  time of this writing, rumors are swirling that a recent meeting in  China produced an agreement to shift away from Core to a software  version that supports bigger block sizes. There are reasons why they might make this change. Core offers miners  increased fees, which are surely welcome (if constraining, as Popper’s  reporting suggests). Over the long term, Core’s plan for off-chain  transactions would diminish the role of the blockchain, with uncertain  results for miners. The alternative, a bigger blocksize and greater on-blockchain  through-put, doesn’t promise much in near-term fees. But it does support  the simple vision of a massive blockchain-based payment system,  supported by increasingly valuable digital money. Core may offer miners the role of “big fish in a small pond.”   Bitcoin Classic might make miners big fish in a big pond. For the Core  side, of course, that skates dangerously close to mining centralization,  which threatens Bitcoin’s very foundations. There is no way forward but forward. Miners, node operators, and  ordinary Bitcoin users should constantly assess whether the software  version they run is the best for the ecosystem and themselves.  Proponents of different software versions should make their cases in the  most persuasive terms they can. This means open debate that avoids  rancor, personal attacks, technical attacks, and censorship. Why is it important to conduct the debate on a high plane? The third  actor. The blocksize debate is not just about competing versions of  Bitcoin’s philosophy, future, and software. It is an exhibition for  non-Bitcoin-users about the type of people that adopt cryptocurrency.  Every side in the blocksize debate is displaying to the wider world what  the “crypto world” is like. Bitcoin is not broken, though news reports may have convinced some  people that it is. The goal of stalwarts on any side of the development  debates must be to ensure that their own actions help rehabilitate  Bitcoin’s public image and don’t bring down what they are working so  hard to build.  Disclaimer: The views expressed in this  article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the  views of, and should not be attributed to, CoinDesk.

Source: http://sh.st/HC5aX