A contentious hard fork isn’t Bitcoin’s only nightmare

Jeremy Epstein is the CEO of Never Stop Marketing, a strategic marketing and consulting firm that specializes in helping blockchain-based technologies bring solutions to market. Its clients include OpenBazaar, Storj, and Internet of People. He also serves as the executive director of the Decentralized Marketing Network.

Dear Bitcoin Core and Bitcoin Unlimited supporters!

A contentious hard fork isn’t your only nightmare.

Your nightmare scenario is that Bitcoin’s brand is tarnished by the scaling debate, leading the general public, regulators, legislatures, and businesses to conclude that Bitcoin adoption is unwise.

As the debate heated up, the public heard about it…and the news was covering it very negatively. If you want proof, you can check out Laura Shin’s recent article in Forbes, where she contrasted the Bitcoin melee with the Democratic and Republican parties.

Aside from terrorist groups like ISIS, no two organizations have ever vilified each other as much as Core and BU, at least not in the United States.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m a big fan of Shin. Like those of us who have devoted our lives to this “circle”, Shin wants Bitcoin and the decentralized era to succeed. At the same time, she has a journalistic responsibility to tell the truth.

Her metaphor is pretty accurate when you consider what America’s two major political parties are doing these days: doing nothing meaningful, constantly attacking and spitting at each other, defending entrenched ideologies, and putting selfish interests above the needs of the greater good.

Just as Republicans and Democrats are losing the respect of the nation, you — developers, miners, and other stakeholders on both sides of the scalability spectrum, whether you like them or not, they represent the community and are embarrassing us. The consequences of this loss of respect may have ramifications beyond philosophy and technology.

The whole world is watching Bitcoin, the blockchain-decentralization experiment.

We are on one side of Geoffrey Moore’s adoption curve — the curve that charts the progression of technology from early adoption to mainstream use. The key idea of ​​Moore’s curve is this: those on the edge of the early majority (as distinct from innovators like you and early adopters like me) are the ones who decide whether to embrace it or not.

However, if these potential adopters read, “Oh, it’s like Democrats vs. Republicans” when considering using Bitcoin, then they really might approach Bitcoin the same way they approach Republicans vs. Democrats.

"Ignore them all."

Concept is the key

This new perception, combined with the negative press that has accumulated since the Mt. Gox incident and Silk Road, and the natural enemies of decentralization, will provide ammunition for those who want to prevent the spread of this innovation of Satoshi Nakamoto. They will use it to create fear, uncertainty and doubt (FUD) among the general public.

Primavera de Filippi, a researcher at Harvard University’s Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society, introduced me to Schopenhauer’s three stages of technology adoption:

1. First, innovation is ridiculed.

2. Second, innovation faces fierce opposition.

3. Third, innovation is recognized as inevitable.

For many others and me, it is indeed inevitable that Bitcoin will reach Phase 3. We just don’t know when. What I do know is that Phase 2 could be extended or shortened.

My concern is that the longer the blocksize debate goes on, the more FUD it creates, and the longer Phase 2 lasts.

The block size debate is bad not only for Bitcoin, but for everyone who cares about decentralization, and for startups that are actively thinking about how to market their projects to a mainstream audience.

What’s more, the scaling debate is detrimental to those who don’t even know they should care about decentralization and are being harmed every day, such as the 2 million unbanked people and immigrants who have to pay high fees to send international remittances.

Bitcoin is the poster child for the decentralization movement, which is why I care so much about the blocksize/scaling debate.

Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times columnist Tom Friedman has a new book called Thank You for Being Late. In the book, he talks about some macro trends that are driving the "Age of Acceleration."

Interestingly, he says, “I’m sure I’ll write about blockchain in the paperback version of this book” (p. 146). On p. 275: “If we want to liberate society, we first need to liberate the internet.”

Thought leaders like Friedman are able to push the early majority into action, but they don’t fully understand the technology yet (I’ve reached out to him and started to help him understand it), and progress so far has been very positive. Instead, we need to realize that the last thing we want is for him and others like him to say “Bitcoin has potential, but it’s not ready for prime time because the Bitcoin community can’t get along, which only puts you at risk.”

At the end of the book, Friedman talks about how broken government is and his experience growing up in Minnesota. According to Friedman, for many years, Minnesota had a great legacy of bipartisanship that could be a model for the entire country. In the state, Democrats and Republicans worked together. They compromised and got things done.

Once upon a time, government used to be about compromise. At least in the United States, we need to make grand compromises on taxes, spending, immigration reform, and health care, but now no one is willing to deviate from their rigid positions. Today's politicians only know how to dig at each other's heels. It's frustrating and infuriating, and it makes us weak in many ways.

So if everyone on the outside sees the “civil war” between Core and BU and reads negative stories about Bitcoin in major publications like Forbes, like, “Well, it’s like the Democrats and the Republicans.” It’s hard to imagine anyone saying, “Yeah, I want more Bitcoin in my life.”

I understand the underlying technical mechanics of this block size debate. I understand the philosophical issues (and real money) involved, and I understand that we have something great going on. In order for it to be great, I need more people to realize that Bitcoin is in fact better than our current centralized system because it has less risk, less friction, more security, and lower costs — which is a good thing for everyone.

We don’t know what that compromise is.

However, as someone with 20 years of experience in disruptive technologies, I realize that the people on the other side of the Bitcoin adoption chasm are not like us. They are more risk averse. They have been burned by the promise of technological panaceas and they won’t even read Satoshi’s whitepaper and try to understand what SegWit or Lightning Network is or what hashrate is.

They just ask themselves, “Is the risk worth it?

We have an opportunity to do what Republicans and Democrats can’t seem to do: compromise for the sake of struggle.

I can't tell you how to do it. All I can suggest is that all parties agree to come together with open minds, perhaps through a world-class mediator. It's time to act like the old leaders who were able to put personal feelings and self-interest aside when necessary.

The longer the scaling debate drags on, the longer decentralized development will suffer setbacks.

When I look around at the state of the world and the challenges that Friedman has identified that face all of humanity, we cannot afford any unnecessary delays.

I just hope we can solve the scaling issue soon.