Topic: Should Peter Vessenes resign as the Executive Director for Bitcoin Foundation ? - page 10. (Read 24387 times)

This is part of the problem. We don't.

And from what I have seen, I haven't been impressed.

We need someone more visible, articulate, and more of a leader.

He's already admitted he's open to someone else taking over the directorship of the foundation. That's not a good start.

My problem is not what this guy does with his own business.  If you're going to interface with U.S. banks, you're going to have to submit to some degree of regulation.  My concern is that this guy appears to be in some position to make decisions for the rest of the users, who may just want to stay away from banks in general.  Why should someone with this conflict of interest have any authority? 

As for the fork problem, people went along with that solution because it worked a lot more quickly than any other solution would have.

I certainly don't expect anyone running a Bitcoin business to sacrifice their livelihood for some bullshit idea of ideological purity.  However, I'm not sure someone running such a business should be telling anyone else what to do.

I've thought of creating a site that will constantly check the official downloads for any nefarious changes and report if anything is found, but at the moment I'm working on another project, so it would have to wait. But I think if there was anything nefarious going on, that it would be spotted by some devs ?

But true - what could we do if the official software was in fact changed containing something most people would not approve of. I hope it never comes to that..

Core ideas of BTC implementation should be carefully analysed. Regulation is a tricky word when it is used with lobbying. These people don't understand exactly what the revolution, innovation and math of course. If anything should be regulated on BTC markets, it is fiat itself. Remove it, problem solved almost instantly.

They can't "regulate gravity" but they can pretty much forbid you to skydive for example.

We should not be so arrogant. Governments can be dangerous to Bitcoin.

Sad but truth - bitcoin indeed is centralized system that pretends it wants to be decentralized.

1. The blockchain split incident. It required central authority to split the chain. It required central authority to cause the problem in the first place (which was formed by accumulating >50% hash power).

2. The client code is controlled by central authority. Does anyone check the source code and compile it by hand before using it? Even if someone does, 99% of userbase just installs whatever they get each time a new version is released. If that code is secretly controlled by some authority, they have all the power they need and you can't do anything about it.

So basically, at this point, BCF can be considered a lobbying organization operating for the benefit of Coinlab.

I don't want anything to do with that business, and still wonder why BCF can't simply be ignored.  What authority does it have to tell anyone to do anything?  If you don't like it, don't support it.

If BCF is considered somehow to represent Bitcoin itself, then there is a glaring conflict of interest in it being run by a principal of one specific business that is competing with every other Bitcoin business.

I don't like when companies become involved with lobbying groups for their industries, its how cartels are created - its not free market at all.

However, we don't live in a free market, we live in a world where corporatism and lobbying governments is how you get things done.

You should never get your news from a newspaper, all that article was about was declaring that the BF was willing to talk, and had the support of the rest of the industry.  It was confirmation that they really did speak for the community and were willing to do what the government wanted to move bitcoin to the next level.

This is good old fashioned politics, and not somewhere where ideology has a home.

Real issues that rock the boat are best discussed behind closed doors, where there isn't an audit trail - but in public, everyone should have the same voice - that is how the game is played.

If you don't know the rules, you lose!

Governments cant regulate mathematics, which is the basis of bitcoin. Its like trying to regulate gravity.

I suppose you think Linus got appointed to the Linux Foundation for defacing a Windows XP CD, eh?

I remember Gavin Andresen setting dollar bills on fire in an early interview. Apart from that, he's the epitome of political correctness. (Just waiting for Gavin to pop in with his two cents - as he has a magical ability to spot whenever his name is mentioned on the forum. )

Code signing keys for the client issued by the  OS vendors (Microsoft and Apple) whose bootloaders are in turn recognized by the hardware vendors.  Just wait.

Speaking of which, it's too bad we don't have a project leader with the kind of balls Linus has.

It was probably a bit hasty and silly of me to open such a poll on such a whim, given the lack of information regarding the case, but anyway it seems like it spured some decent discussion.

Established business people tend to like regulations a lot, indeed. They keep competition at bay, by creating a huge barrier of entry to new market participants. By pressing for tough and strict regulations, Vessenes assures that few people will manage to create new startups to compete with him (like that bitfloor guy for ex., would his exchange exist if regulation enforcement was strict when he started?)

Regardless of whether he meant regulation for his competitors or regulation for Bitcoin in general, I don't find it sane to have a person that likes to use government force in the Bitcoin Foundation board. But who am I to say anything anyway, I'm not even a member of this club.

I very much enjoy the free-market spirit of "older" Bitcoin entrepreneurs like Erik Voorhees, Roger Ver, Charlie Shrem etc. I guess that as Bitcoin approaches mainstream, more "classic" entrepreneurs will start showing up. We'll have to deal with it.

Thank you OP for opening this topic and making me aware of this fact.

As Vessenes runs Coinlab I don't expect him to do anything that would hurt his business. And of course you're right. Govt's would like to have control of everything. But can they ?

People sell out. Welcome to reality. Why do you think communism and anarchy are great ideas on paper but never work. Greed! If you look at bitcoin as a social experiment you can learn alot about humanity.

I quess the bigger picture in what you say is that the bitcoin foundation as organization wants to see bitcoin regulated.

There are also other persons from that direction seem to talk fondly about regulation and I have heard nobody from there to talk passionately against it so I think it is a pretty good guess to assume Vessenes actually means what he says and what he says is pro-regulation. Not that it matters that much as it is more important that the bitcoin foundation wants regulation.

Don't make the mistake of analyzing the effect of regulation just taking the current letter of the law but you should look out for the spirit of the law and more importantly the spirit of the lawmakers. The letter of the law is subject to change and the direction of change can be guessed by thinking about what is the spirit of the lawmakers.

What is the spirit of the lawmakers? Are they happy to have AML regulations enforced only at the exchanges or would they want to track all bitcoin movements? Would the taxman also want to know everything and tax everything? Would some FBI or CIA want to track all money movements? Yes. That is what they are going to go after and having a lot of bitcoin-businesses on US soil and bitcoin foundation aboard on this effort is making things much easier for them.

What power does the BCF have that prevents everyone from just ignoring it?

Good point, I never heard of Vessenes before he became the Executive Director. Casascius I have great respect for though.