Topic: Interviewing Bitcoin Foundation Ex. Director Jon Matonis - Any Questions? (Read 1913 times)

Great news and congrats on the new position!!!

That's fantastic. Thanks very much for being clear and direct about this. And congrats again on the new job!

now that is helpful!  thank you!

Consider it done. I fully support bitcoin fungibility across the board without exception.

well said and i concur wholeheartedly.

+1
The crony capitalist crowd is a huge issue.

I am not 100% up-to-date on what's going on in the Bitcoin Foundation but I would like to hear Jon Matonis elaborate on this:


I believe the Foundation should learn from the TOR Project:
https://www.torproject.org/docs/faq-abuse.html.en

Yes, more on this please. How did the "new broom" move come about? Did Vessenes wake up one morning thinking Matonis could do a better job? Was there a coup - if so, how did it work and when is the next one?... Seriously - the sudden apparent top-down change in direction came as quite a surprise to many - how did it happen? Is it a "good thing" in terms of structure and process (not outcome)? - if so, why? Will Matonis be hiring a food taster?       

especially Litecoin 

His general opinion on altcoins?

I would like to know how Matonis plans to appease the forces that want to "regulate" (control, neuter) bitcoin while at the same time protecting those aspects that make bitcoin extraordinary.

Also, since the Foundation appears to have attracted people with statist, regulatory inclinations what does it say about the organization that it has now installed him as its director?

Also, given that there are many prominent people in the bitcoin community that are pro-regulation as well as very many who are rabidly anti-regulation what future paths does he see?  No problem it will take care of itself?  Blockchain fork?  New darkhorse technology like zerocoin?

You guys may find the responses from the foundation board members to this pull-request to add the promotion of decentralization and privacy to the foundation Bylaws to be interesting:  https://github.com/pmlaw/The-Bitcoin-Foundation-Legal-Repo/pull/4

Yes, as someone else noted above, this pertains to taint. I'm curious whether the Foundation will support efforts to build databases of "tainted" (ie, banned/blacklisted) coins that entities can use to block transactions. I believe such systems run the risk of destroying an *essential* property of ideal money; ie, fungibility - the notion that one unit of the currency is the same as another, and can be sliced, recombined, and spent without issue.

Peter Vessenes was very pro-taint-database at the conference in May. I don't know if he was speaking on behalf of CoinLab, the Foundation, just himself, or some combo thereof, but his position was clear. I'd be interested to hear what Jon Matonis has to say about the issue in his new role as Executive Director of the Foundation.

To be clear, I'm all for bitcoin businesses fully operating within the bounds of the law. Fully open and compliant businesses will elevate bitcoin in the public sphere and get the currency into more hands. That's great for bitcoin.

What's not great for bitcoin is harming a core property of what makes it a fascinating and unique experiment. Bitcoin is ideal money for modern times, and fungibility has been a key property of good media of exchange for thousands of years. If that's eliminated or weakened, the case for bitcoin as a great money is eliminated or weakened, and this whole thing becomes a lot less interesting.

This episode I'm definitely going to have to listen to.  What I'd like to hear: what kind of advocacy is the Bitcoin Foundation doing in Washington DC for the Bitcoin Community?

Is he going to support the address tainting proposal? Bitcoins are not fungible and effectively worthless if he supports it.

Can you explain this a little?

I'd like to hear Matonis say that the Foundation is committed to fighting to uphold bitcoin's ideal monetary properties. Specifically, fungibility.

How many coins you got? 

As a percentage of assets does he have none, some or "all-in" ?

did being targeted by LukeJr, gmaxwell, jgarzik, and Savann play a role in your decision?

Either was it would be good to hear an official position.

Was there ever an official proposal?  I thought it was just hypotheticals