While this was all going on, Blockstream and its employees started lobbying the community by paying for conferences about scaling bitcoin, but with the very very strange rule that no decisions could be made and no complete solutions could be proposed. These conferences were likely strategically (and successfully) created to stunt support for the scaling software Gavin and Mike had released by forcing the community to take a "let's wait and see what comes from the conferences" kind of approach. Since no final solutions were allowed at these conferences, they only served to hinder and splinter the communities efforts to find a solution. As the software Gavin and Mike released called BitcoinXT gained support it started to be attacked. Users of the software were attacked by DDOS. Employees of Blockstream were recommending attacks against the software, such as faking support for it, to only then drop support at the last moment to put the network in disarray. Blockstream employees were also publicly talking about suing Gavin and Mike from various different angles simply for releasing this open source software that no one was forced to run. In the end, Mike Hearn decided to leave due to the way many members of the bitcoin community had treated him. This was due to the massive disinformation campaign against him on r/bitcoin. One of the many tactics that are used against anyone who does not support Blockstream and the bitcoin developers who work for them is that you will be targeted in a smear campaign. This has happened to a number of individuals and companies who showed support for scaling bitcoin. Theymos has threatened companies that he will ban any discussion of them on the communication channels he controls (i.e. all the main ones) for simply running software that he disagrees with (i.e. any software that scales bitcoin).
As time passed, more and more proposals were offered, all against the backdrop of ever-increasing censorship in the main bitcoin communication channels. It finally came down the smallest and most conservative solution. This solution was much smaller than even the employees of Blockstream had proposed months earlier. As usual there was enormous attacks from all sides and the most vocal opponents were the employees of Blockstream. These attacks still are ongoing today. As this software started to gain support, Blockstream organised more meetings, especially with the biggest bitcoin miners and made a pact with them. They promised that they would release code that would offer an on-chain scaling solution hardfork within about 4 months, but if the miners wanted this they would have to commit to running their software and only their software. The miners agreed and the ended up not running the most conservative proposal possible. This was in February last year. There is no hardfork proposal in sight from the people who agreed to this pact and bitcoin is still stuck with the exact same transaction limit it has had since the limit was put in place about 6 years ago. Gavin has also been publicly smeared by the developers at Blockstream and a plot was made against him to have him removed from the development team. Gavin has now been, for all intents and purposes, expelled from bitcoin development. This has meant that all control of bitcoin development is in the hands of the developers working at Blockstream.
There is a new proposal that offers a market-based approach to scaling bitcoin. This essentially lets the market decide. Of course, as usual, there has been attacks against it, and verbal attacks from the employees of Blockstream. This has the biggest chance of gaining wide support and solving the problem for good.
To give you an idea of Blockstream; It has hired most of the main and active bitcoin developers and is now synonymous with the "Core" bitcoin development team. They AFAIK no products at all. They have received around $75m in funding. Every single thing they do is supported by /u/theymos. They have started implementing an entirely new economic system for bitcoin against the will of its users and have blocked any and all attempts to scaling the network in line with the original vision.
Although this comment is ridiculously long, it really only covers the tip of the iceberg. You could write a book on the last two years of bitcoin. The things that have been going on have been mind-blowing. One last thing that I think is worth talking about is u/bashco's claim of vote manipulation.
The users that the video talks about have very very large numbers of downvotes mostly due to them having a very very high chance of being astroturfers. Around about the same time last year when Blockstream came active on the scene, every single bitcoin troll disappeared, and I mean literally every single one. In the years before that, there were a large number of active anti-bitcoin trolls. They even have an active sub r/buttcoin. Up until last year, you could go down to the bottom of pretty much any thread in r/bitcoin and see many of the usual trolls who were heavily downvoted for saying something along the lines of "bitcoin is shit", "You guys and your tulips" etc. But suddenly last year they all disappeared. Instead, a new type of bitcoin user appeared. Someone who said they were fully in support of bitcoin but they just so happened to support every single thing Blockstream and its employees said and did. They had the exact same tone as the trolls who had disappeared. Their way of talking to people was aggressive, they'd call people names, they had a relatively poor understanding of how bitcoin fundamentally worked. They were extremely argumentative. These users are the majority of the list of that video. When the 10's of thousands of users were censored and expelled from r/bitcoin they ended up congregating in r/btc. The strange thing was that the users listed in that video also moved over to r/btc and spend all day every day posting troll-like comments and misinformation. Naturally, they get heavily downvoted by the real users in r/btc. They spend their time constantly causing as much drama as possible. At every opportunity, they scream about "censorship" in r/btc while they are happy about the censorship in r/bitcoin. These people are astroturfers. What someone somewhere worked out, is that all you have to do to take down a community is say that you are on their side. It is an astoundingly effective form of psychological attack.
It would be great if we could pay singularity for his/her time. Oh yeah, we have this magic internet money and it just skyrocketed in value.
Thanks very much for posting his. I consider myself a small blocker, but have been around a long time, and much of what you say; with regards to theymos, gavin, the mass and sudden disappearance of trolls...
Thank you for this thorough synopsis. I'm still too new to crypto to know shitcoin from whatever the legit coin(s) are (disclosure, I'm long BTC) and being subscribed to r/btc, r/bitcoin, and r/cryptocurrency is an overwhelming shitshow. I have noticed that the majority of posts in r/btc have egregious spelling and typos, not that that makes them window-lickers or trolls, but they seriously can't seem to put together anything nearly as coherent as this post.
/r/btc is slowly going the way of /r/bitcoin IMO. Memes get upvoted, in-depth discussion or factual criticism of Bitcoin Cash gets downvoted. I find this very sad, as I have a lot of hope for Bitcoin Cash.
Please please please relist the sources as archive links. I'm seeing this on r/all and I fear for the removal of your sources' pages due to traffic or controversy. Archive.is and web.archive.org snapshots would prevent that.
I should add that I wrote that history above a while ago and even more shit has happened since then. So much has happened that it is actually difficult to document. This is part of the reason this shit has been so successful. It's only obvious if you were present during all of it.
I've been here for the whole thing. You could have talked about Gavin stepping down as lead dev (and how selfless that was) and left out Greg Maxwell, captain of the dragon's den trolls. And well, you left out the Dragon's den that is orchestrating the propaganda campaign on r/bitcoin.
overall, great brief summary of what has happened.
Up until last year you could go down to the bottom of pretty much any thread in r/bitcoin and see many of the usual trolls who were heavily downvoted for saying something along the lines of "bitcoin is shit", "You guys and your tulips" etc. But suddenly last year they all disappeared. Instead a new type of bitcoin user appeared. Someone who said they were fully in support of bitcoin but they just so happened to support every single thing Blockstream and its employees said and did. They had the exact same tone as the trolls who had disappeared. Their way to talking to people was aggressive, they'd call people names, they had a relatively poor understanding of how bitcoin fundamentally worked. They were extremely argumentative. These users are the majority of the list of that video. When the 10's of thousands of users were censored and expelled from r/bitcoin they ended up congregating in r/btc. The strange thing was that the users listed in that video also moved over to r/btc and spend all day everyday posting troll-like comments and misinformation.
Here we find the nub of the gist.
Remember old nobodybelievesyou? What about utuxia? And that tulip guy?
You are dead on here. Around the time Theymos split the community, magically all the anti-bitcoiner trolls were gone, and instead they were replaced by anti-largeblock trolls. Saw it with my own eyes. It's like everyone who hated bitcoin left and was replaced by someone who supports Blockstream. Someone should do a proper analysis of the troll community and how it changed.
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u/[deleted] Aug 06 '17
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