In September 2015, he was going around asserting that Mike Hearn would be the benevolent dictator of XT (assuming XT would be hardforked into becoming the "new" bitcoin). I mean, jesus fucking christ, a guy has to lose some credibility in the community by the subsequent rage quit of someone who just a few months earlier would have had the potential of becoming the "benevolent dictator" of the "new" bitcoin.
Anyhow, Gavin comes off as a bit bitter about bitcoin consensus and bitcoin governance and seems to strongly suggest that bitcoin's governance has to be fixed, but then is a bit dodgy about that being the problem and continuing to insist that a technical fix is an emergency, while at the same time taking digs at the "broken" nature of bitcoin's governance .
In any event, his various assumptions and presentations of issues are losing their coherence and interferes with his objectivity and credibility as a trustworthy speaker.
One minute, Gavin is endorsing Hearn for the position of Bitcoin's glorious new benevolent dictator for life.
A bit later, Hearn flounces off in a huff of poutrage, having gone full drama queen and ragequit Bitcoin with maximum whininess.
That hurts Gavin's credibility, but not as much as his unending attempts to sell a contentious hard fork using fear and a false sense of urgency.
How much Coinbase equity does Gavin own? I hope he's being well compensated for being such an epic shitlord, and not being coerced via NSL.I agree with your points; however, I doubt that we have any real convincing evidence that Gavin is either specifically invested in Coinbase or some other endorser or that he is being controlled by a NSL (National Security Letter). Sure, either of those situations are possible, but they are not necessary in order to recognize specifically that Gavin seems to be going a bit off of the rails. O.k. currently, Gavin is being paid by MIT, and from my experience, sometimes those kinds of academic institutions will not outwardly coerce their employees in any kind of way, but when there remains institutional harmony, they we leave the relationship open and beneficial to each of the parties to "exercise academic freedom" and professional discretion.
Actually, I have experienced these kinds of dynamics in my own various workplace scenarios.
The persons who are the biggest kiss asses frequently truly believe in their kiss ass. They are not faking it, and they are not necessarily receiving any specific extra payouts. But frequently, they will also receive a lot of various intangibles including discretion to spout out the employer's party line in a variety of situations in which the more objective (and neutral) employees would not receive such latitude.