Satoshi’s Choice

The author of this article, Vinny Lingham, is the CEO of Civic.com. He has predicted the trend of Bitcoin many times and published many excellent articles.

Most of my previous posts have focused on the economics of Bitcoin. Lately, I’ve been looking at the psychology and sociology of Bitcoin. I’m not a churchgoer or a religious zealot. I never have been, and I never will be. However, I do see a lot of people taking a cult-like approach to the debate about “scaling Bitcoin.”

I consider myself a free thinker. I change my mind if and when the facts change. I hate being labeled and have always tried to avoid groupthink. I have found in my own experience that keeping calm and respectful of even the most heated debates will almost always lead to the positive outcome you desire. I consider myself a calm and cool individualist who seeks solutions that will bring more benefits while also being consistent with my own core beliefs and principles.

However, I fear that as a wider community we are currently very far away from this mindset and that without additional pricing pressure or an external catalyst, a solution to the current scaling impasse is unlikely to be found any time soon.

You only have to look at the number of emotional (often insulting) responses to my tweets to realize how heated this debate has become, and how emotional people have become from this chronic fatigue effect. When emotions take over our brains, our behavior becomes less “dignified” and our judgment becomes brittle. When this happens, bad decisions are often made to make progress and relieve emotional tension, rather than for the greater good.

Most people I meet in the Bitcoin community are focused on whether the price of Bitcoin will go up or down.

They invest in Bitcoin based on emotion as a store of value and the future of digital currency. I think I have expressed my views well in a previous article "The Love of Bitcoin", so I am not going to repeat myself here.

That said, I still believe that only a price below $875 will force the parties to reach an agreement, which is also my argument when I wrote The Power of the Invisible Hand. I didn't expect market forces to keep the price of Bitcoin above $1,000 for a long time, because I didn't think the motivation for Bitcoin to rise was there, so the market would adjust. Obviously, I failed this time, but the invisible forces of the market still clearly pointed to the direction of Bitcoin - that is, to maintain the status quo. Maybe, this is not a bad thing, at least for a while.

I have taken a step back and decided to learn more broadly about all of the options in this debate, especially the details. I have found that the current situation is not simple and will take time to resolve. I have spoken to all sides of the scaling debate, and there will be pros and cons no matter which path we choose.

“I have been saying this for a long time: I believe a contentious hard fork that resulted in a minority chain would be a disaster for Bitcoin. Whichever path we choose, we must avoid that at all costs.”

Remember, as a community, we are still proving ourselves to the world, which has little understanding of the details of our industry. Bitcoin is seen as a rebel. We are the spark that drives this industry forward. We are the people who are trying to disrupt everything around us but have not yet proven that we can do so because we believe in Bitcoin. But in the eyes of many people, Bitcoin is still associated with Silk Road and other negative connotations from the banking world. Bitcoin still has a long way to go.

When Bitcoin is going well and the skeptics are reduced, the haters will still be there. Imagine how bad things will be... In my opinion, contentious hard forks and brand split/dilution are simply not an option, and as a consumer technologist with experience in branding, PR, marketing, UX and other soft issues - believe me, contentious hard forks should be avoided at all costs.

So what does the above have to do with the title of this article: Satoshi’s Choice?

What would Satoshi do? The title of the article does not refer to a path that Bitcoin should take, but rather to a fact - Satoshi made a decision. He decided to leave the community to us, whether it makes the community better or worse. He decided to give us a gift with a curse - the more we love Bitcoin, the greedier the community and the outside world will raise their ugly heads.

We are now at a crossroads, because Satoshi has decided to remain silent, in a sense that there is no definitive evidence that he/she is still alive. Maybe he/she is dead. Or maybe he/she is Craig Wright, or Dorian Nakamoto, or Scronty, or Bali Satoshi, etc. Maybe we will never know who Satoshi Nakamoto is. However, we do know that Bitcoin is not like Litecoin, which has a Charlie Lee.

The big question is: if Bitcoin is a decentralized peer-to-peer currency, why do we need a leader? The answer is simple — because Bitcoin is not one.

For Bitcoin to get to the point where it is leaderless and immune to manipulation by any person, institution, or group, it really needs to be decentralized at every level. Frankly, as a community, we’ve done a shit job. We’ve been too focused on the price of Bitcoin, or scaling, or a bunch of other things. We’ve created a monster that has made Bitcoin perhaps the worst in terms of functional innovation among the major cryptocurrencies. I would agree with those who argue that this immutability is what gives Bitcoin its power if it was achieved by distributed choice (like a widely decentralized view) — not by default, because these decisions are centralized and we’re stuck.

It’s clear that we won’t have decentralized mining, decentralized exchanges with huge volumes, or even multiple Bitcoin clients that have a lot of say. Instead, we have exchanges at the mercy of the banking system, most mining pools controlled by a small number of operators, mining chip manufacturing controlled by two companies, and Bitcoin development largely controlled by a group of people. Even Silicon Valley is facing challenges with monopolies today. In a world where capital formation has become largely decentralized over time, we are still not making progress in breaking down the monopolies in our ecosystem.

How do we achieve true decentralization in the Bitcoin ecosystem and at a global scale?

In my experience, diversity is what makes our business and lives work best. Diversity is a sign of social progress. That’s why I believe in Bitcoin. However, this is not a technological mistake, but a social one.

The Bitcoin world I want is one with many chip manufacturers and mining hardware companies to choose from, competing with each other to acquire thousands, perhaps even millions, of miners scattered across the globe. The Bitcoin world I want is one with dozens of mining pools to choose from, each with their own Bitcoin philosophy, but all with an eye on the long-term good of Bitcoin and able to act as they wish. The Bitcoin world I want is one with multiple Bitcoin clients to use, that work together to improve Bitcoin.

Some Bitcoin clients are written in C++, some in JavaScript, some in Go, and whatever other languages ​​people want to use, and each team can run with their own philosophy of software development - and the market will select the best Bitcoin clients and Bitcoin Improvement Protocols (BIPs), which can compete with each other for market share in a relatively fair environment. And users will gravitate to the team they feel is the most popular. Opposing voices can also join other teams without feeling excluded. Talent will be retained in our community, rather than alienating each other and forcing people to join competing coin projects.

And, rather than fighting, each layer of decentralization is not trying to deliberately fork Bitcoin - it is trying to get more people around the world to use Bitcoin, especially more young people from different backgrounds, more women (Is Bitcoin really dominated by men (95%)? This is obviously not good), more diversity, more perspectives, and a common goal to contribute to the Bitcoin ecosystem and jointly further the development of the Bitcoin blockchain for the benefit of humanity. But the above is not the world we live in today. Maybe one day in the future it will be realized, and I am very excited.

“Now, regardless of our views and opinions on Bitcoin, maybe we can treat each other with a little more respect and move on to the next chapter.”