Topic: [ANN] Bitcoin Foundation - page 28. (Read 127634 times)

Charlie?

Unfortunately, I fail to see why it is dangerous. To me, the foundation have zero power at all beyond the consent and support of the community. As far as I am concerned, the developers will continue their dance with the independent horde of miners.

They were hoping for an Obama-esque festival of bipartisanship and compromise, for the greater good of the Bitcoin monarchy.

What you are failing to see is how this is different.

The way Gavin has controlled the widespread bitcoin implementation has been in an UNOFFICIALLY recognized way. That's why it was okay. Any power that came with what he did was minor, and could be challenged if need be fairly easily.

Just one example: how much Google link juice do you think Gavin got from administering the mailing list. I'm willing to bet zero. Now, how much Google link juice would a formal entity marketed as representing Bitcoin get for the same activities such as administering a mailing list. See the difference?

That's just one example. Another is people's perception of who has what sort of power. If a new bitcoin person was told a developer did things in a sort of patchwork way to get things done, that's one thing. If that same person is told a staff member of an official organization handles x items for Bitcoin, that's quite another. One infers power and authority, while the other doesn't do so much if at all.

As for what is linked from where, like this forum for example, all that can change. That's where the problem is. The way things appear now (like foundation benevolence) can change.

All I can say is: where is the promised stability that would come with the annoucement? lol

Yes. But that is still to be determinded.
At the moment bitcoin.org doesn't even link to the bitcoin foundation and for any bitcoin related topic this forum is on the top of the list. I don't think the latter will change any time in the near future.

So what you are basically saying is that decicions which where discussed in this forum will be made inside the foundation, without neccecay consent of the forum members.
That's true.
However most of these decicions were actually discussed and made in the mailing list and in private by Gavin and the others.

That just sounds dirty.

Until yesterday, all the newcomers found bitcointalk almost as the first response in the bitcoin search. Here they will find a lot of information and quite different economic perspectives. From today they will start their bitcoin approach in his honeypot. Do you get my point?

The following statement really bothers me, and is ridiculous in the context of a product whose originator clearly valued anonymity highly, for good reason:


Ask Argentinians (currency controls) or people in Spain (cash transactions over 2500 euros banned) whether privacy and anonymity are overblown features of Bitcoin.

There are many people who are into Bitcoin not for profit motives or ease of transactions, but for agorism, privacy, and black market products.  My fear is that the foundation will, whenever choosing to endorse, fund, approve any products or services, favor business-centric goals versus privacy-centric goals.  The board composition bears this out.  Only Jon Matonis and possibly Gavin have a history of at least giving lip service to privacy issues versus marketplace growth.

As such, I think the foundation as presented would go down much better if either it was renamed "Bitcoin Chamber of Commerce" or "Bitcoin Business Bureau" or "Bitcoin Business Foundation".  If it wants to truly represent the original Bitcoin intent and be worthy of the name "Bitcoin Foundation", I'd recommend the following changes ASAP:

• It needs at least one more person on the board who is a fulltime freedom ideologist and privacy advocate, instead of Bitcoin businessman.  In other words, people who are likely to stand their ground and fight for Bitcoin's privacy features versus maximizing market cap and getting government seal of approval.  I'd like to see more Rick Falkvinges and/or Birgitta Björnsdóttirs and/or Jacob Appelbaums.
  
• It needs to institute a payment method for developers that's decentralized and not linked directly to the Foundation.  I want the Foundation to simply be one donator among many to the development group, within a payment process handled in an open, crowdfunded, pseudoymous way.  That way, if the Foundation dissolves or fails to be a good steward of the Bitcoin vision, Gavin and others can leave without having to fear having their income cut off.
  

So Gavin has controlled the widespread bitcoin implementation  for a while now, independently of any foundation... you get the point I am making?

Thanks, then all is well. Let the protest continue, I on my part am still undecided, because it can have both a positive and negative impact, if done properly can make bitcoin stable and popular, but as all of you have pointed out, power corrupts. I think it should be renamed "Bitcoin Foundation (USA)" and we should have such other foundations in other countries, @Amit Taki Bitcoin Foundation (UK) ?

Yes, they are doing it now internally, but from yesterday their donations pay the Gavin Andresen payroll. Maybe even Mtgox is one of the premium members of the Foundation. I don't know.

But as Atlas says, control the widespread bitcoin implementation, and you will control all the network.

If these guys who started "A Bitcoin Foundation" would have embraced the community a little better instead of twirling their moustaches while hatching their plot in secret, perhaps the rollout would have been welcomed almost unanimously with open arms. Instead, they caused a divide. Bad karma.

Good question. Thanks for asking  

No. It's NOT part of the protocol/rules that nobody shall form a foundation. What the leading developers and others have done isn't against Bitcoin in any way EXCEPT that it may be ill-advised.

Let me clarify some things.

Nobody is saying these people don't have the right to do what they did by forming TBF, including the way they did it. They are free to take any actions they choose. It's a free, well, not country, but free Internet/world sort of thing.... It's a free market. That's the point.

What the dissenters are doing is fulfilling their proper role in the free market by objecting to some event which has happened within that free market. We are trying to convince people (including the people involved) that they may be taking the wrong action(s) in one or more ways. That is healthy.

I'm not against a free market, against developers getting paid, or even against foundations forming. What I am against, however, is ill-advised actions whether intentional or not. My goal is to highlight what ill-advised actions may be.

As has been stated many times, control over the protocol is not the issue here, it is influence over the ecosystem that surrounds it. Take the exchanges for example. What if all the exchanges disappeared due to regulation? The protocol would be intact, as would the clients, but there would be a tremendous loss of liquidity for conversion to and from fiat.

With "A Bitcoin Foundation" becoming a de-facto authority when it comes to communicating with the press, governments, or business, it will inevitably grow in its power to affect the ecosystem. Probably these guys mean well, but corruption is always an increasing function of time, never a decreasing one.

Well, if they are doing this internal that's their predicament. I still consider that a bad move, and trade my BTC elsewere from now on.
Thanks for the info.

What I fail to understand is that what it all has to do with bitcoin protocol, is it part of the bitcoin protocol that no body will form a foundation of any sort?
I understand people may think that this may not be a good decision and they may be right but everyone is free to do anything and it is wrong to behave like you have been deceived or some contract has been broken. If tomorrow you open a Bitcoin Group can I or should I stop you? I can only request you that it may not be good for bitcoin.

I saw many brilliant thoughts in these posts and enjoy reading them!

Sadly, when there is money, there will be politician, this never changes

It's a hidden list. I read about it in this thread:

https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.815195

Let's play devil's advocate shall we?

Bitcoin currently has a market cap of around 125 million dollars (exchange rate 12.50 x about 10M coins). It currently returns over 19 million results on Google, is owned/used by hundreds of thousands of users, including several businesses, and has global reach.

Now, all of this has been based upon a perception of what Bitcoin is. Key to that perception is that it's decentralized. If, from the start, the currency/system began and at its heart was a "Bitcoin Foundation" claiming to speak for it I doubt it would have gotten this far. This is because people's primary objection would be, but wait, it's not decentralized!

People would be, justifiably, skeptical. Who are the people that run the corporation? How many of the coins did they get? How much power and influence over what exists of Bitcoin do they have? Etc. The people would have speculated that surely if and when the project grew this representative entity would amass more wealth, power, and influence. How could it not? A lot of people that got involved would have said, no thank you, I'm quite sure.

Now, let's look what really happened. Bitcoin did NOT start this way. It was marketed as decentralized, and because there was no perceived concentration of power, it essentially was and is. This allowed the progress to date. But, now enters the representative entity tending toward centralization of power. Regardless of how it says it's designed to be benevolent in reality there are many ways it can and will acquire power. One example: most people don't know of Bitcoin. Let's say enough people start thinking TBF is truly the deal representing bitcoin. They will begin referring to it as such, including word of mouth and giving such link juice to Google. This would only increase over time. Can you not see how this entity begins to have a monopoly of anything regarding Bitcoin? But back to the example, new people start to learn of TBF first because that's how the world perceives Bitcoin is represented. Many go straight to their site, rather than anywhere else (where dissenting voices may be) and they donate and/or read into and become involved with TBF's version of Bitcoin. There are always at least two sides to any story, but new users would always only get the one side. That's just one example of where the power comes from. Another quick one is (clandestine) meetings of high level members with powerful outside entities, like VISA or U.S. gov, or TPTB, take your pick.

EDIT: one way I see to alleviate the pressures and problems I point out above is to have the entity intentionally seek to deflect and LIMIT itself amassing power. I'll therefore ask my question yet again, for the fourth time below...