Roger Ver Says He Was Misled about Recorded Block Size Debate
A widely shared discussion between Bitcoin core developers, representatives of the Bitcoin ecosystem and Roger Ver was released onto Soundcloud (transcript here ), despite Mr. Ver never having been formally invited to an interview.
“I was invited to the channel under completely false pretenses,” Mr. Ver tells CCN.com. “I was told it was just to talk with members of the community, but when I arrived there was a pre-planed 4 vs 1 debate lined up that had been kept completely secret from me.” The debate isn’t the issue for Mr. Ver. It’s the lack of clarity about what was going on which irks him the most.
“I don’t mind debating the issues at all, but people should be up-front about what they are inviting someone to,” said the world’s first Bitcoin ecosystem investor, and CEO of Bitcoin.com.
“About a half a dozen people on twitter had been inviting me for several weeks to spend some time in their chat room,” Mr. Ver says. “I would have agreed to a debate, but not four vs one. It should have been equal time for each side of the debate. Not 80% vs 20%.”
Despite there being clearly several proponents of block size scaling solution, Segwit, Mr. Ver was joined by only one other Segwit skeptic. During the discussion Mr. Ver mentioned he was glad at least one other Segwit supporter was there attending to balance things out. Mr. Ver doesn’t suspect the discussion will have much ramifications for Bitcoin or its block size debate.
“Hash rate is what counts at the moment,” Mr. Ver notes, “so I’m working full speed ahead on pool.bitcoin.com.”
Many took to a popular subreddit, r/btc, to lament the way in which the discussion turned into a recorded interview and consequently put online. Further, a transcript that surfaced of the discussion is said to contain major errors. For one, an original transcripted stated Mr. Ver made the following statement when asked why he has yet to endorse Segwit.
“I suppose at this point because I feel that the current Core team hasn’t listened to me enough.”
However, in the recording, this statement actually is, “I’m willing to consider endorsing segwit. I suppose the reason why I’m not going to endorse segwit today is mainly because I feel like the current Core team didn’t listen at all to the actual business community using Bitcoin.”
As the poster on Reddit notes: “This is the type of propaganda and manipulation that makes people upset and why many people are angry with the core side of the debate” .
Image from Shutterstock.
