A Core Developer Calls the Bitcoin Business Community ‘Entitled’
In what’s perhaps the most important discussion had between Bitcoin core developers and perhaps the most influential voice in Bitcoin, Roger Ver, Bitcoin core developer and Ciphrex founder Eric Lombrozo made comments about Bitcoin business leaders in reply to a comment made by Mr. Ver.
The very telling comments highlight a rift between the Bitcoin development team and those building parallel services around the system. As Ver warns, according to a transcript of the discussion, companies like Coinbase are adding alternative currencies, while Circle ceases certain Bitcoin operations altogether.
“I think all of the business community, including Coinbase, Blockchain.info, Xapo and Circle, have been saying hey we need more capacity we need more capacity we need more capacity,” Mr. Ver says. “There was a Satoshi Roundtable event in Florida…[m]aybe 11 months ago now, where CEOs from these companies were there. A good chunk of the Core development team was there, including some people on this call… The business community was begging and pleading and saying hey we’re about to hit a scaling wall, we need this now, please please do this.”
The Bitcoin Core team, Mr. Ver points out, had different plans. “And the reply basically from the Core development team was no absolutely not no compromise we’re going to take our time and we’re going to do it this way and we don’t care what the actual users who are using bitcoin for commerce are,” Mr. Ver says. “Maybe I am mischaracterizing the response a bit, but that’s certainly the way all the people in the business community felt the response was.”
Eric Lombrozo, Bitcoin Core developer and founder/CEO of Bitcoin service provider Ciphrex, has recently made public appearances and spoken to Bitcoin press about the recent Bitcoin Core proposal, Segwit. He took issue with how Ver reports some in the business community feel.
“I think there’s a sense of entitlement where these companies want us to do something and we’re not getting paid anything by these people to do it, I think that might not be morally correct. If anyone wants to build whatever they want to this, everything is out in the open. All the source code is there. You can take it, run with it and do whatever the hell you want with it. We’re giving this to the world for free.”
Lombrozo adds: “Bitcoin Core is an open-source software development project. Anyone can participate. All the meetings are fully public. We have a mailing list that anyone can join. At any time, someone can submit a pull request. Anyone can fork the code base and add their own features and maintain whatever they want. I think everyone encourages this as part of the open-source ethos. Most of us work as volunteers. I have never received a payment from any of the companies that Roger mentions.”
Images from LinkedIn, Wikipedia.
