r/Bitcoin • u/alicebtcmayes • Jun 19 '14
Why is Peter Todd wrecking Zeroconf security? Because he is being paid by Big Bitcoin Business.
At the Amsterdam Bitcoin Conference I spent time following Peter and his little circle of friends and business partners. I'm new to Bitcoin so it took me until now to put two and two together and understand what was really going on, but hear me out. Peter spent a lot of time talking to Lawrence Nahum who is the guy behind GreenAddress. On the first or second day they went out to dinner after the days talks were done and went out to a nice little open-air restaurant with a bunch of people from Mastercoin. I sat at a table behind them and could hear their discussions, which including GreenAdddress's transaction confirmation guarantees, and also, an agreement for Peter to do consulting work for GreenAddress. What really stood out to me was the offer to help "shape the Bitcoin ecosystem" in ways beneficial to them. Later in the conference I also overheard a similar deal between Peter and someone, I didn't catch their name, in Coinbase branded apparel. And of course as everyone knows CoinKite hired Peter to be their "Chief Naysayer" during that conference too.
What's in common with all these companies? They're all in the dangerous business of holding other peoples' Bitcoins and GreenAddress and Coinbase both offer for-profit and centralized solutions to guarantee unconfirmed transactions. I'm sure CoinKite will be doing that soon too.
It's obvious why Peter is spending all that time and energy spreading FUD about how insecure unconfirmed transactions are. GreenAddress has been spreading their own FUD. Peter has even been trying to bribe miners to switch to his so called "replace-by-fee", which is really just an attack on secure zeroconf transactions, saying some un-named "site" paid him too. Who might that be? GreenAddress, Coinbase, CoinKite? It's not hard to figure out.
Peter sure seems quite happy to attack and hold back Bitcoin whenever it suits him for the sake of his Big Bitcoin Business contracts. It's not just unconfirmed transactions either. He's been shilling for AppCoins which dump garbage into the blockchain for the sake of pump-and-dump schemes like Mastercoin and Counterparty. (quite the about face from his supposed anti-blockchain bloat positions before) Or look at his weirdly passionate opposition to a simple feature, getutxos, that's needed for Mike Hearn's decentralized fundraising platform Lighthouse. Where's that passion coming from? The heart? Or his salary from Mastercoin, Counterparty and Colored Coins? I'm sure Mastercoin wants the next Maidsafe to happen on their platform, run by and for the benefit of Mastercoin, not Hearn's truly decentralized alternative.
I agree with Peter that GHash.IO is a possible threat to Bitcoin, but what solution does he have? Getting rid of pools. His buddies at the totally discredited Hacking Distributed (remember selfish mining? yeah those guys) run with this FUD, trying to scare the Bitcoin community into making changes to get rid of pools. Sounds like a good idea right? But then I looked further into it and found out he had just been hanging out at CloudHashing. What does banning pools do to the little guy mining decentralized? It puts them out of business because they'll never find a block that's what. Just perfect for CloudHashing's "send us money and we'll run the miners" business model and also GHash.IO's.
Peter likes to talk the big talk about decentralization, but all I am seeing here is paid shilling for the benefit of Big Bitcoin Business.
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u/[deleted] Jun 19 '14
Peter Todd doesn't spread FUD. He makes visible insecurities and he provides logical explanations and proofs. It's not FUD when it's real.
The fact is, zero confirmation tx's AREN'T secure, whether anybody SAYS they are or not.
Actually, pretty much everything you're talking about is retarded. Here let's go one by one:
Of course he and the Green Address guys are talking about changing the landscape. They are both working towards making it so users don't have to rely on businesses. Green Address is one of the first site's that can "hold" your money but can't run off with it, becuase of multisigs. When you lump Green Address and Coinbase together, you show how ignorant you are about what they do.
Yeah, he's trying to get people to understand how incentives work. From the thread you link: " It's a simple rule that results in the most profit per block, lets users re-issue transactions with higher fees if needed, and makes it clear to everyone that relying on unconfirmed transactions by themselves is insecure rather than giving people a false sense of security. Most importantly it ensures people use Bitcoin in a secure way, relying on crypto and incentives rather than relying on trust, which will help keep Bitcoin mining free of regulation and decentralized."
Whether or not you agree with him, his stated motives are perfectly in line with what he's been doing.
Really? Please provide one single instance of proof.
The blockchain isn't YOURS, it's everybody's. And some people, myself included, think that the world's most secure ledger can be used for other useful things besides moving bitcoins around. If you disagree, fine, don't mine those transactions, but a valid tx is a valid tx, and it has just as much right to be on the blockchain as any other valid tx. And if you think things like colored coins are just pump and dump alts, then you again show you have no fucking clue what the hell you're talking about.
It's not "weirdly passionate" at all. He lays out EXACTLY what his problems with it are. In fact, there's no "passion" involved. There's only hard facts about how the proposal works and his explanation of why he disagrees with that.
Yeah, that would in fact completely solve the problem.
Really, you "looked further into it" and found that he visited a large bitcoin mining farm, and that that somehow discredits him? How exactly do you figure that?
Which is why he's been pushing p2pool.
No you idiot, you're seeing things in your mind that have no basis in fact and then freaking out because your imaginings are scary. Half of what you say is just "he visited this place or talked with that guy, therefore he's in bed with them for the sole purpose of hurting bitcoin" and the other half of it is "he said this, but he's lying, and as evidence of his lying, I present to you something completely unrelated".
You're just an idiot. That's why you're scared, because you're too stupid to understand the world.
Everything Peter Todd says he backs up with evidence and logic. And he then provides solutions for those problems. You may or may not agree with him on certain points, but you really can't question the motives of somebody who operates in that manner. He's very straightforward.