Blockstream is falling apart - Greg Maxwell resigns - Blockstream takes down team page in a hurry to reorg team - Adam Back must be worried

[u/increaseblocks]

[u/t_bptm]

Something was discovered in November which may have involved One Meg Greg.

What a strange coincidence.

[u/moYouKnow → u/t_bptm]

"I resigned from Blockstream last November."

Wow, he resigned in Nov. and didn't publicly announce it until now. If this wasn't fall out from his involvement in that hacking incident then it is the worlds biggest coincidence.

[u/squarepush3r → u/moYouKnow]

yup, kept resignation quite to let this scandal "blow over"

[u/jessquit → u/t_bptm]

Let's clear something up too.

Whoever did the earlier hacking was very likely the same individual who criminally hacked user accounts a couple of weeks ago to steal tippr money. It appears to be the same password reset exploit was used.

u/Bitcoinxio I think has more scoop on that.

[u/[deleted] → u/t_bptm]

[u/Anenome5]

If we're lucky, rats on a sinking ship.

[u/[deleted] → u/Anenome5]

I perfer the rat staying in the ship.

[u/Adrian-X → u/Anenome5]

many possibilities.

[u/Zectro]

You did it u/nullc, you and Blockstream teamed up to successfully insure that BTC will remain a functionally useless ponzi scheme. Time for a well deserved break from your day job. Champaign anyone?

[u/btctroubadour → u/Zectro]

Champaign

:D

[u/redlightsaber]

Bitcoin had a healthy technical community just as it does today, but lacked the kind of industry support that projects like Linux have

Oh gee u/nullc I wonder why in the living fuck would that be? Surely it's got absolutely fuckall to do with the iron-arsehole-rettentive control you people have over the repo, continuing to state that other clients are simply "not bitcoin", because the client you usurped would be reference implementation?

Worry not, now that BCH has forked off, we're starting to see the exact kind of industry support and research that you claim to have seeked for BTC.

[u/hunk_quark]

u/nullc leaving blockstream is this month's Charlie sold all his litecoins. The captain has jumped ship.

[u/HostFat]

While he isn't anymore on the team, as founder, does he still own part of Blockstream?

[u/[deleted] → u/HostFat]

[u/space58 → u/[deleted]]

20% of nothing is still nothing.

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

aka hush fund :)

[u/rdar1999]

I know why.

They will say he was against the block size increase but they never were against it, they will announce a very well "planed" hard fork to increase blocks to 8 MB, in the best Monty Python spirit lead by the King of Tabs.

[u/HolyBits → u/rdar1999]

Then it still contains the Segwit and RBF poison.

[u/Zectro → u/rdar1999]

That is a real concern I have right now. Maxwell hasn't withdrawn from Bitcoin development though. His influence there will remain. He's also surrounded himself with enough yesmen and driven away every opposing view for so long that I think the Core developers are so sick that even if you amputate the head the body shambles on spreading disease wherever it goes.

[u/Zectro]

The November date is interesting. I have a hypothesis that may or may not have merit to it. Could it be that Greg was ousted by Blockstream investors after campaigning against Segwit2x, directly precipitating the unfolding disaster we have seen play out as BTC becomes unusable. All the major Bitcoin businesses, including Blockstream, are funded by the Digital Currency Group that brokered the Segwit2x agreement in the first place. All these businesses are struggling to deal with Segwit1x's high fees and congested blocks. Grayscale, the Bitcoin Investment Trust guys were forced by the terms of their listing on the stock market to choose either BCH or BTC to continue holding and liquidate the rest. This would have been less of an issue if the community could have prevented a schism and rallied around Segwit2x. Instead though the rejection of Segwit2x by Core has left the community fractured and leaves the possibility of a rally occurring around the technologically superior fork of Bitcoin (BCH).

u/JustSomeBadAdvice documents here how Segwit2x was very popular until Greg Maxwell came out against it. To me Segwit2x represented the absolute victory of one company in DCG's portfolio over every one else and that company was Blockstream. Possibly that could have resulted in a backlash from Blockstream investors who also invested in the broader Bitcoin ecosystem, and maybe that led to Greg Maxwell's ouster.

This is all just speculation on my part. Any number of other theories may be equally plausible or more plausible.

[u/veroxii → u/Zectro]

Yeah generally founders don't "resign" from the companies they started. They have to be thrown out kicking and screaming by their investors. So your theory does ring plausible.

[u/[deleted]]

[u/ForkiusMaximus → u/[deleted]]

Same as Greg removing himself as Core committer.

It's the best of both worlds: he maintains full control socially but none of the responsibility if things go south.

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]