Industry insiders: The Core development team has violated the original intention of Bitcoin development

On May 10, the price of domestic Bitcoin trading platforms exceeded 10,000 yuan for the first time. Media reports said that the central bank has completed the inventory of Bitcoin trading platforms, and relevant management measures may be issued in June.

As the price of Bitcoin soared, a large number of investors were worried. If the document is released in June, it may cause a sharp fluctuation in the price. Some investors are optimistic. Considering the price difference between China and foreign countries, June may be the time to open the withdrawal of Bitcoin. In this way, the price of Bitcoin will rise to a higher level, which is good news.

On the other hand, for long-term Bitcoin investors and practitioners, the current future development path of Bitcoin is more worrying.

In early May 2017, Blockstream, a blockchain company focusing on sidechain research, was accused of holding some patents and being the employer of the core members of the Bitcoin Core development team. Therefore, during the sensitive period of the Bitcoin expansion dispute, a large number of community members expressed anger, believing that the Core development team was controlling Bitcoin and working with Blockstream to seek personal gain through Bitcoin. Rational practitioners believe that soft forks are the main expansion route of Core, and the application of sidechains is the core of this solution. If BS holds patents, from the market perspective, they may adopt monopoly behavior, and Bitcoin will become more and more centralized.

From another perspective, the dispute over capacity expansion can be seen as a dispute over the future development path of Bitcoin, not just a question of whether to fork or not. Some people believe that Bitcoin should follow the path of a settlement network; others believe that Bitcoin must stick to its principles and become an electronic cash system.

The settlement system refers to the institutional arrangement for clearing the debts and credits between traders and financial institutions. It is the rules for intermediaries that provide payment services to manage currency transfers, such as UnionPay and Visa. The Bitcoin Core development team proposed a soft fork expansion plan, attempting to turn the Bitcoin network into a settlement system. This was refuted by many people in the industry.

The initial value of Bitcoin comes from the consensus system in the general direction. First of all, the emergence of Bitcoin has driven the development of the digital currency industry in the true sense. Bitcoin is a digital currency.

Secondly, when Bitcoin was first created, it appeared in the form of an electronic cash system. This is the title of the white paper by its founder Satoshi Nakamoto, which directly defines it.

Finally, Bitcoin is a public ledger based on the proof-of-work mechanism, and decentralization is the most important consensus among Bitcoin participants.

The emergence of Bitcoin first has the concept of currency, and then has other scalable functions. The development direction of the settlement network supported by the Bitcoin Core development team cannot be directly denied, but they ignore the most fundamental attributes of Bitcoin. Therefore, this expansion method is not advisable no matter what pain points it can solve. Industry insiders pointed out that placing transactions on the side chain and marginalizing the main chain will greatly increase the transaction fees on the Bitcoin main chain, resulting in the inability to increase the number of users on the Bitcoin main chain, making it difficult to increase the number of users who actually hold Bitcoin, and causing the Bitcoin ecosystem to be full of falsehoods and forgeries. In the end, people no longer believe in the authenticity of the Bitcoin blockchain.

If the Bitcoin network is regarded as a settlement system, then Ripple will be a hundred times stronger than Bitcoin, because it was born for this function. Apart from the user base, Bitcoin and Ripple have no competitive advantage at all. Obviously, if Bitcoin develops in this direction, it has deviated from its original intention.