I plan on using Bitcoins as a convenient, very-low-cost means of exchange. I don't plan on saving a significant number of Bitcoins as a store of value.
He then goes on to compare hoarding bitcoin to
hoarding dollars or euros or yen
Some people, like Gavin, don't care about bitcoin's value proposition. They just see it as a payment channel. That's okay, but I strongly disagree.
I actually was looking for an alternative to E-gold where I could bypass the insane restrictions of PayPal when I discovered Bitcoin. It was and still is just a way to transfer money across borders
without restrictions. At the time, I'm not sure anybody was expecting this current Bitcoin value. So I tend to agree with Gavin's views on this.
You seem to be a guy who bought 30,000 Bitcoins for $30 who wants to hoard coins until they reach an extreme value.
That's an interesting assumption you've made about me. If I were holding a large number of bitcoins, does that mean my opinion holds less weight? That my interests should be ignored? I'm curious what this sort of personal comment is supposed to prove.
Bolding emphasis mine -- in order for bitcoin to remain censorship-free it must retain its p2p (i.e. decentralized) qualities. This isn't about what one person or another believes bitcoin should be worth; that is up to the market. That's why bitcoin isn't comparable to the yen as Gavin suggests; like gold or other commodities, its supply cannot be externally inflated or deflated, just as it allows the movement of money without restrictions. We must thank decentralization for these features.
The debate is first and foremost about preventing bandwidth pressures from encouraging too much node centralization, as block size is directly related to nodes' bandwidth requirements and nodes have been in perpetual decline as block size has increased over time. Once nodes are sufficiently centralized, any number of bad (or nefarious) scenarios can occur -- from persistent regional feather forks to Sybil attacks (therefore censorship of transactions).
An excellent way to
hopefully achieve this is by supporting Blockstream which will bottleneck and throttle Bitcoin transactions between users with their 1 MB cap until only the bigshots with long pockets that can pay exorbitant fees will control the Blockchain.
Eventually this will ultimately force the adoption of blockstream by the rest of the Bitcoin population and will also allow members to file disputes or ask for refunds with their new reversible transaction platform. No doubt, this will encourage mainstream mass adoption as with PayPal and the value of Bitcoins will surge upwards to unprecedented levels, where you Sir, will start cashing out your Bitcoins and become the new, wealthy Elite.
It is a great idea, I must admit to it and I am all for it as I would probably benefit as well albeit on a much smaller scale.
In conclusion, all I'm saying is, Gavin's idea is probably to follow Satoshi's vision and will probably scale without problems very slowly. However, although Blockstream is
NOT Satoshi's vision, in my opinion it has the ability to scale a lot more rapidly but first it
MUST create an artificial 1 MB problem in order to achieve its vision.
Let's face facts...a 2 MB block would render Blockstream unnecessary for another couple of years!
It's an interesting theory, but how can you be sure that Blockstream's plan is to throttle transactions on the mainchain? If that were true, and Core is controlled by Blockstream as you suggest:
Why release Segwit at all?--why allow for more mainchain throughput? Why not lobby for smaller blocks?
Why is Matt Corallo, Blockstream employee, suggesting a block size limit increase to 1.5MB? Why was Adam Back, Blockstream Co-founder, suggesting in summer 2015 to increase the block size limit to 8MB over 4 years? Why does Core's scalability roadmap include capacity increases, which further include block size limit increases?Why are only 7 of 93 people that are credited in the upcoming release working for Blockstream? The lead maintainer doesn't work for Blockstream, and neither do other big names like Peter Todd or Jeff Garzik or Luke Dashjr.
Do note the epic meta commentary by
Satoshi Nick Szabo.
What exactly have Pieter Wuille, Gregory Maxwell and Matt Corallo done that has so obviously marked Blockstream and Core as evil, small blockist scum?
What proof do you have of "exorbitant fees" (and shouldn't that be qualified by the cost of keeping the system robust and decentralized, rather than using it purely as a pejorative)?
I don't think this should be about Satoshi's vision, but if it were, I don't think anything in Core's capacity roadmap goes against the whitepaper, nor his comments that the block size limit was only a temporary measure. In any case, how are Gavin's ideas more in line with Satoshi's vision? He's shown very little concern for centralization concerns and his technical responses to such criticisms have been wholly uncompelling. That's a problem when it comes to Satoshi's vision of a p2p (
decentralized) ledger.