Topic: [ANN] Bitcoin Foundation Board Election Details Announced - page 4. (Read 19778 times)

I consider "Questionauthority" and others like him to be in the same class of people as the Jews who collaborated with the Nazis

Everyone makes that mistake. You think it means the greater society. The authorities I question are the supposed power players in Bitcoin. The likes of Nefario, Pirateat40, Zhou Tong, Bruce Wagner, Matthew Wright, Luke Dashjr, numerous pool operators I've mined for that were stealing and many others made me that way. I have a "trust no one" attitude here and the ones I trust the least are the authority figures.

@QuestionAuthority: is that some kind of extreme authority questioning, almost radical?

Joe

I wasn't really hurt, sorry for making you concerned (well, maybe a bit about the "international" part). For the record, my "platform," and my view in general, is that bitcoin has certain aspects that are just simple facts of its existence. It is what it is, and it can't be changed. Politicians may want to control issuance of bitcoins to keep it from forming speculative bubbles, or be able to reverse fraudulent transactions, or be able to track every transaction and link it to every identity, but that simply won't happen. They'd be legislating at a wall. So the best that anyone can do from that angle, really, is inform them of the facts, and help them regulate their way around those. Most probably this will involve a very specific new class of regulations that deal with specific criminal issues, instead of the current "monitor everything and hope we can catch something later" methods that they use with the established financial system. The best analogy I can think of would be meeting legislators and explaining to them that, for example, pretty soon gun control legislation may be a waste of resources when anyone can simply 3D print their own gun at home, that they should get ready for such a reality, and maybe they should focus instead on fighting the causes of violence instead of the tools. Likewise with bitcoin, I'm sure they want to keep regulating to keep everyone safe and keep things fair, but with bitcoin, they'll have to change their strategy and focus more on looking for actual criminals instead of just making things difficult for everyone. I also think that lying to them by trying to assuage them with things like "bitcoin isn't really anonymous" and "you can't launder large quantities of money with bitcoin," when it can be, you can (slowly) and when both of these things are being actively developed, is very productive, either. It's the same situation as above, and we might as well let them know what it is they are going to be faced with and let them adjust to the new reality, lest we end up with other semi-useless regulations which people will still not be able to comply with.



Is Elizabeth on Reddit at least?

For info. At the time of writing reddit has 49,912 Bitcoin readers, closing in on the magic 50k
http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/

When Theymos started censoring our project threads, it seriously undermined the creditability of Bitcointalk's moderation in my opinion. The Bitcoin universe is larger than Bitcointalk and its 22,000 members.


Thank you for making my point about community engagement. If you want people to reach out to you, then maybe you shouldn't say hurtful and off the cuff remarks. I know Elizabeth and I can assure you that she is both passionate and very bright. She will be a great leader in the Bitcoin community.

In the LTB interview, she sounded like a ditzy cheerleader. She's fuckable but I would suggest getting that out of your system via tube sites before casting your vote next time.

+1 That's the best news of all. 

Thanks for mentioning that bg002h.

I will never join the foundation their views don't align with mine. You can't claim someone is an advocate for the bitcoin community but just the foundation community. Bitcoin is global community if something affects the foundation community then it will more than likely affect this community. I have actually worked with a lot of people in the foundation so I have no issues with their community, but to say she is just going to take on one community and leave the rest of us to survive on our own, makes me think she knows nothing about bitcoin. Look around when one company is in trouble we all try to help cause at the end of the day, bitcoin bonds of together. We are trying to make bitcoin as big as we can, and that is a view shared by not only the foundation community but this community as well. I hope she understands this, and I hope more newbies understand this base. This segregation will be the death of bitcoin.

That wasn't meant to hurt feelings. People running for any elected office (with government or private industry) can't allow anything to hurt their feelings. I think you're a great spokesman for Bitcoin with unrivaled passion. Bitcoin would suffer without you as a warrior fighting the good fight. I just don't believe your goal of, as you state it, "make reliance on banking systems and government issued currency obsolete" should be the primary objective of Bitcoin at this stage in the game. Good business will require that Bitcoin representatives play nice with governments and find a niche inside of fiat systems like a low cost Western Union replacement. I would have preferred that no one lobby the US government and instead allow officials to learn about Bitcoin with lengthy research allowing Bitcoin more time to grow first. However, they have already opened that Pandora's box and will need someone that can play nice and agree to work within the system instead of working to make the system obsolete.

it is a pity for someone who seems so passionate about bitcoin, Elizabeth doesn't seem to spend much time interacting with the 'vibrant' bitcoin community here.

Will

It is kinda hard to be advocate for the community when I never even heard of her before this election, and she isn't on this forum. I guess the walled garden forums don't allow her to interacted with the biggest bitcoin community this forum.

For the record, Rassah was on my short list.

The truth is that we had a large number of great candidates....great candidates who are and will continue to be great stewards of the community. Our main goal should be figuring out how to build an effective community and I think the Foundation is part of it. Others disagree and that's ok. I donated a small amount to bitcointalk (฿10? It was cheap at the time) and some think that's stupid. I disagree (and I think history is on my side on this one). Only time will tell how effective different parts of the community are for different goals. But I think arguing that Bitcoin doesn't need any community at all is foolish.

I'm proud to be members of the same community and foundation as everyone who ran. Each deserves a hearty thank you for stepping up to be counted amongst the doers. 

There's a second round of elections. She may be the one most likely to win, but there is a smaller field now, and most people who threw away their vote last time despite not wanting to vote for Elizabeth (like I did) will be more serious this time. Not saying she will not win, but it's not guaranteed.


That was actually one of my initial concerns: how can you be an advocate for the community when you aren't even involved in it? I guess if she wins, she'll have a lot of catching up and introductions to go through.



FIFY. Don't forget, Bitcoin is way bigger and much more resilient than any self-appointed "official" organization. It was specifically designed to be that way.

The community was referring to was the membership of the Bitcoin Foundation.  It costs .2btc to be a member for a year.  I paid the membership cost, so did a little less than 700 other people.  If you want to be represented by the foundation you should join too.

And before you say "Shouldn't she be advocating for the Bitcoin community" take a look at what most of the complaints are about the Foundation - People say they try to represent themselves as the Bitcoin community when in fact they're a small subset.  This is true, and it's exactly why your vote would matter a whole bunch more if you had indicated the actions of the foundation mattered to you.

It's almost like she'd be an advocate for the community...

The correct person won the election. She is exactly what enterprise needs to support profitable growth. There is nothing wrong with "feel good" words and cheer leading. Ask any politician about the importance of perception over substance. Politicians need two qualities to effectively lead. They need to take and follow directions from the correct source and implement those directions using every political trick in their toolkit. She should be able to accomplish the necessary objectives with her toolkit. I'm sorry Rassah, I think you're too passionate about your personal agenda for Bitcoin to ever be an effective international leader.

You can see how few votes it would take to buy the needed votes to sway this thing. The foundation is focused on growing globally (and Elizabeth is quite in support of that). I do think having BF-USA underneath a Bitcoin foundation alongside BF-EU, BF-China, etc is the way to go. Keeping us together through that transition rather than splintering I think is important.

Good post, Rassah, that's exactly my impression of her. She's very active, takes the initiative and seems to have great interpersonal skill, but her words lack specificity.

I've made it known a bit early that I don't expect to win, don't intend to win, and intend to support Joerg. So, yeah, I got 5 votes, and am not too surprised about that.


Sorry, I've been too busy doing bitcoin stuff, instead of making up glittery cardboard posters to post around the school, so to speak. And her platform is sort of what I'm talking about. On international growth, she says, and I quote,

“ As a member of the Bitcoin Foundation Board, I will look forward to facilitating a Bitcoin meet-up guide and work to assist leaders and individuals who are passionate about the currency in nations around the world.”

On charitable contributions, she says,

“As a Member of the Bitcoin Foundation Board, I would work to educate non-profits and charitable organizations on the ease of transaction with Bitcoin and the many benefits of accepting donations in BTC.”

In short, there's a list of feel-good words that, to summarize, say, "I will work to make bitcoin more international" and "I will work on getting charities to use bitcoin." There's just not much there besides, "I'll do this general thing I'm being asked about." For example, my own platform also includes, "I will reach out to the community," and "I will get more people to use bitcoin." I am really struggling to find where her platform has anything other than lots of words without actual plan or substance. Even herresponse to the open source topic is basically, "open source is good, and bitcoin should be open source," as if there is any way to change that.


Sorry, not from me. I didn't expect to win, and have legitimate concerns about her.


By running on a platform of answering questions with lots of words that make people feel good, and posting tons of such stuff everywhere she could, but having little substance in what she actually says. So, literally, winning based on trying to gain popular support through fluff campaigning instead of through raising support for ideas and context. As I mentioned, she is very much a politician, knowing how to say a lot to answer questions on positions without actually answering the questions.

And yes, I do feel bad for attacking her directly like this. She is an actual person with actual feelings and ambitions, not just some anonymous name on the internets, but I am just genuinely concerned about whether this is a position that she is right for. I'm not saying she is a bad person, I'm just worried she may not have the skills and experience the Foundation actually needs. However, that may depend on the direction the Foundation wants to take. As I said, if the Foundation wants to mainly focus on lobbying US government, she may be perfect. But that may not be what I and others want the Foundation to focus on.