First off, let me just say that, per my what I said in last week's podcast with Adam Meister, I believe 100% that a hard fork will be avoided, SegWit will be adopted, and miners like Bitmain will forever be cast into the Bitcoin community shadows - with a "punishment" of becoming some of the wealthiest companies on the plant.
That said, the scaling debate saga, for myself as well as many of you, has been as mentally painfully as anything I've dealt with in my professional career. And per last week's Audioblog, I have dealt with A LOT in my 28 years - particularly the last 15; as not only a major Precious Metals investor, but one of the PM communities most vocal "freedom fighters" in the war against the U.S. government-led "Gold Cartel" - which has fought to the death (soon to be, THEIRS) to hold prices down; and consequently, prolong history's largest, most destructive fiat Ponzi scheme the last few inches.
Fortunately, the "Gold Wars" are far more complex than the "Bitcoin Civil War" - as in the former case, they are being fought against the world's most powerful governments; using the most sophisticated "manipulation technology" - like high frequency trading algorithms; "off balance sheet" swaps, leases, and other derivatives; rigged economic data; captive bullion banks and regulatory agencies; decades of Keynesian indoctrination; and the lying, thieving criminals of Wall Street and the fake news media. Clearly, Central banks and governments still view gold (and by proxy, silver) as the primary threat to their dying fiat Ponzi - and thus, have thrown everything they have at them. Which ultimately, MUST backfire on them, given that demand keeps rising, whilst the decimated, destroyed mining industry collapses; and oh yeah, the printing presses keep humming.
Conversely, the Bitcoin civil war is being fought amongst far less rich and powerful private individuals and companies. Sure, it's POSSIBLE Bitmain, Roger Ver, and the rest of the "Chinacoin" stooges are being manipulated by the Chinese government. However, per Marisa Tomei said in My Cousin Vinny, that argument simply doesn't hold water - as logically it makes little sense for the Chinese government to want to harm Bitcoin. For one, they understand Bitcoin more than perhaps any other government. And thus, that like gold, it could SAVE them when their hideous debt/Yuan Ponzi inevitably collapses. Secondly, they might still fail if they attack Bitcoin - perhaps, spectacularly so. And finally, even if they did succeed in destroying Bitcoin, another crypto, like Litecoin for example, would just take its place.
In other words, this is, for all intents and purposes, the entire Bitcoin community against ONE CHINESE CON-MAN, Jihan Wu. And no, I'm not just angry at him in a misguided manner for all the stress he's caused me this year - as frankly, if he didn't exist, Bitcoin would have scaled long ago - long before I had the opportunity to purchase it last year at much lower levels than today. To the contrary, his ASICS BOOST and AntBleed antics clearly exposed him as the liar and thief he truly is. Not to mention, the blatantly obvious lies in his UAHF "white paper," as expertly taken apart by Tone Vays and others. And now, the coup de grace this weekend; i.e., the SegWit 2X beta version, which clearly exposes 2x as a con job - as clearly, it is meant to trick suckers into "signaling" for it, whilst giving Bitmain the ability to execute a last minute "veto"; which I assure you, it would use.
I'm not tech guy, but it doesn't take a rocket scientist to realize that, like the aforementioned UAHF "warning," he is clearly trying to bluff - against people holding far superior hands. I.e., the rest of the global Bitcoin, including all the "signees" of the New York Agreement. Frankly, I'd be shocked if they don't realize this IMMEDIATELY; and thus, start signaling for either the original BIP 91 SegWit - i.e., the best case scenario (if surging 91 signaling caused Bitmain to surrender, and signal, too); or BIP 148. Either way, we're getting SegWit by August 1st - and NOT the fraudulent, likely-to-be-vetoed-if-given-the-chance SegWit 2x mythical version.
Again, this is just a man, at a middling company - with the constant threat of Chinese government intervention hanging over his head - trying to stop the spread of the greatest invention since the internet; and from my perspective as a renowned monetary expert, the greatest monetary invention in history - and care of the horrific political, economic, financial, and social destruction caused by history's largest, most destructive fiat Ponzi scheme, humanities' only "monetary hope."
Consequently, the time to ACT is now - to spread the word of the FRAUD that is SegWit 2x, the BLUFF that is the UAHF, and the emperor with no clothes that Jihan Wu truly is. Not to mention, his pathetic band of Bitcoin pariahs, like Roger Ver and Craig Wright. And I'm not giving Barry Silbert a pass either - as while I don't truly understand his objectives, the fact that he is serving as the front man for this blatant fraud attempt ends all respect I might have ever had for him. Hopefully, he too was simply being duped by Wu the Merciless - which if that was actually the case, I assure you he knows it by now.
So for everyone reading, the time is NOW to prevent ONE CHINESE CON-MAN from his attempt - which likely will fail irrespective - to destroy humanity's only monetary hope. Not to mention, for hoddlers, the best opportunity to became mega-wealthy (aside from Precious Metals, when the Cartel inevitably breaks) in history.
I have been trying to get this message out as much as I can. And I think it is time we, the community, call the Jihan's bluff. Let him hard-fork or do whatever he wants. We must succeed with USAF and BIP 148, I guess.
Great article Andy, I wish more people would closely look at Charlee Lee's(inventor of Litecoin) modest proposal on how to solve the scaling issue working alongside Litecoin itself. Lightning networks, atomic swaps back and forth depending on network traffic, etc. I'm surprised how few people bring this up but this is what he is forging ahead with and convinced me that it was the right way forward: https://segwit.org/my-vision-for-segwit-and-lightning-networks-on-litecoin-and-bitcoin-cf95a7ab656b
SeqWit is private property of Blockstream and will be used to syphon miner's business. They are the ones who veto block size increase. That's how they try to hijack Bitcoin. They blame the miners for what they are doing themselves. Their so-called "community" is the herd of nodes owners who are simple software users. They have to be opportunistic followers. Miner's hashing power is the actual backbone of Bitcoin security.
Bitcoin will soon become more centralized and weak just as Litecoin.
impressed. very nice article!!!
Andy you hit it out of the ballpark. I agree with Tone Vays that Segwit2X is a trojan horse. If any and I mean any exchanges, wallets or merchants runs this piece of crap software instead of the Core software which has been tremendous for over 8 years then there should be hell to pay. We can't sit on the fence anymore. I really wish all of the heavy all star team of core of the core developers would come out in a statement and say if Segwit2x is adopted by the main bitcoin community then apparently this community desires a different untested software development team and we no longer feel welcome and therefore there's no more reason for us to work on bitcoin anymore. You bitcoin wallets, exchanges and merchants trust and support a con artist Chinese miner with his merry band of nincompoop software developers more than us who have steered bitcoin for over 8 years with incredible stability. Good luck with them. We quit. This would send shock waves throughout the economic majority community.