I think the real outlook is far more pessimistic than Hearn is.

Bitcoin was never a 'transparent and open community'. Go look up any
discussion about altcoins or changing the money supply algorithm and
you'll find plenty of censorship and attacks on any perception or
discussion that might redistribute value from those that have hoarded
bitcoins to those that actually create value by using the currency.

Bitcoin (and most altcoins) still follow the same 'vulture capital'
start-up model where the first 5 people end up with 95% of the wealth
and everyone else begs for scraps.

So what do we need to do in order to have a real grass-roots movement
that recognizes that wealth can really only be sustainable generated
and held when there is a reasonable and transparent wealth-redistribution
mechanism from those that have orders of magnitude more than they need
for food and shelter, and those that are dying for lack of the money
to buy food and shelter?

The problem is very few of the wealthy seem to understand how big of
a problem they are creating by hoarding wealth. My experience is I've
seen the worst of this among the folks that get press and attention
around Bitcoin.


On Mon, Jan 25, 2016 at 07:15:27AM +0200, Margus w. Meigo wrote:
> Probably You have read Mike Hearn <https://medium.com/@octskyward> last
> post by now, but here it is once more for fresh insight
>
> I would say he is slightly pessimistic
> But what is reply to my local LHV bank here who want to get updates on
> solid bitcoin future? ?
> As it is like last our country own bank, would not wanna let anyone screw
> them over.
>
> How is the solutions and what he wrote is something that was told to be
> impossible (and on what, was people warned few years ago..)
>
> So what are hes most true points to worry about ?
> When we will have complete power to shut of anyone we want and hang them
> who stops truth about what is needed to be done.. what Would You Do?
>
>
>
>
> *Here is picks from long post:*
> https://medium.com/@octskyward/the-resolution-of-the-bitcoin-experiment-dabb30201f7
>
>
> "In the span of only about eight months, Bitcoin has gone from being a
> transparent and open community to one that is dominated by rampant
> censorship and attacks on bitcoiners by other bitcoiners. This
> transformation is by far the most appalling thing I have ever seen, and the
> result is that I no longer feel comfortable being associated with the
> Bitcoin community."
>
> "From the start, I’ve always said the same thing: Bitcoin is an experiment
> and like all experiments, it can fail. So don’t invest what you can’t
> afford to lose. I’ve said this in interviews, on stage at conferences, and
> over email. So have other well known developers like Gavin Andresen and
> Jeff Garzik."
>
> "Why has Bitcoin failed? It has failed because the community has failed.
> What was meant to be a new, decentralised form of money that lacked
> “systemically important institutions” and “too big to fail” has become
> something even worse: a system completely controlled by just a handful of
> people. Worse still, the network is on the brink of technical collapse. The
> mechanisms that should have prevented this outcome have broken down, and as
> a result there’s no longer much reason to think Bitcoin can actually be
> better than the existing financial system."
>
>
> "In other cases, entire datacenters were disconnected from the internet
> until the single XT node inside them was stopped. About a third of the
> nodes were attacked and removed from the internet in this way.
> Worse, the mining pool that had been offering BIP101 was also attacked and
> forced to stop. The message was clear: anyone who supported bigger blocks,
> or even allowed other people to vote for them, would be assaulted.
> The attackers are still out there. When Coinbase, months after the launch,
> announced they had finally lost patience with Core and would run XT, they
> too were forced offline for a while."
>
>
> "Bogus conferences
> Despite the DoS attacks and censorship, XT was gaining momentum. That posed
> a threat to Core, so a few of its developers decided to organise a series
> of conferences named “Scaling Bitcoin”: one in August and one in December.
> The goal, it was claimed, was to reach “consensus” on what should be done.
> Everyone likes a consensus of experts, don’t they?
> The fact that the first conference actually banned discussion of concrete
> proposals didn’t help."
>

> "Think about it. If you had never heard about Bitcoin before, would you
> care about a payments network that:
>     Couldn’t move your existing money
>     Had wildly unpredictable fees that were high and rising fast
>     Allowed buyers to take back payments they’d made after walking out of
> shops, by simply pressing a button (if you aren’t aware of this “feature”
> that’s because Bitcoin was only just changed to allow it)
>     Is suffering large backlogs and flaky payments
>     … which is controlled by China
>     … and in which the companies and people building it were in open civil
> war?
> I’m going to hazard a guess that the answer is no."

>
>
> "In case you haven’t been keeping up with Bitcoin, here is how the network
> looks as of January 2016.
> The block chain is full. You may wonder how it is possible for what is
> essentially a series of files to be “full”. The answer is that an entirely
> artificial capacity cap of one megabyte per block, put in place as a
> temporary kludge a long time ago, has not been removed and as a result the
> network’s capacity is now almost completely exhausted."
>
> "You may have read that the limit is 7 payments per second. That’s an old
> figure from 2011 and Bitcoin transactions got a lot more complex since
> then, so the true figure is a lot lower."
>
> "At a stroke, this makes using Bitcoin useless for actually buying things,
> as you’d have to wait for a buyer’s transaction to appear in the block
> chain … which from now on can take hours rather than minutes, due to the
> congestion.
> Core’s reasoning for why this is OK goes like this: it’s no big loss
> because if you hadn’t been waiting for a block before, there was a
> theoretical risk of payment fraud, which means you weren’t using Bitcoin
> properly. Thus, making that risk a 100% certainty doesn’t really change
> anything.
> In other words, they don’t recognise that risk management exists and so
> perceive this change as zero cost"
>
>
> "If that didn’t convince you Bitcoin has serious problems, nothing will.
> How many people would think bitcoins are worth hundreds of dollars each
> when you soon won’t be able to use them in actual shops?"
>
>
> "Conclusions
> Bitcoin has entered exceptionally dangerous waters. Previous crises, like
> the bankruptcy of Mt Gox, were all to do with the services and companies
> that sprung up around the ecosystem. But this one is different: it is a
> crisis of the core system, the block chain itself.
> More fundamentally, it is a crisis that reflects deep philosophical
> differences in how people view the world: either as one that should be
> ruled by a “consensus of experts”, or through ordinary people picking
> whatever policies make sense to them.
> Even if a new team was built to replace Bitcoin Core, the problem of mining
> power being concentrated behind the Great Firewall would remain. Bitcoin
> has no future whilst it’s controlled by fewer than 10 people. And there’s
> no solution in sight for this problem: nobody even has any suggestions. For
> a community that has always worried about the block chain being taken over
> by an oppressive government, it is a rich irony."
>
>
>
> In article the links also, and rest of it..
>
>
>
> On Sat, Oct 31, 2015 at 4:36 AM, odinn <odinn.cyberguerrilla@???>
> wrote:
>
> > Mike Hearn
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> Armastusega,
> Margus

> _______________________________________________
> unSYSTEM mailing list: http://unsystem.net
> https://mailinglists.dyne.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/unsystem

-- 
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Troy Benjegerdes                 'da hozer'                  hozer@???
7 elements      earth::water::air::fire::mind::spirit::soul        grid.coop

      Never pick a fight with someone who buys ink by the barrel,
         nor try buy a hacker who makes money by the megahash