Cypherpunk tears are shed for Bitcoin

The Bitcoin community is unhealthy right now. I know unhealthy when I see it. I’m a grown adult who lives on Taco Bell, Red Bull, Top Ramen, a minimum amount of vegetables and considers walking to the bathroom exercise. When I say unhealthy I mean that the Bitcoin community is one that bathes not in cypherpunk ideals, but partisan revelry that borders on civil war. Our feelings about everything from what we call features (see segregated witness discussion) to block size constants results in months to years of aggravating infighting and trollish behavior on both sides. Don’t be mistaken Bitcoin will succeed on it’s core principles without everyone making love, but it pales in comparison to what this brilliant group of engineers and businesses could do if unity and commitment to working together was actually a demonstrated value.

The Cypherpunk Manifesto states “We must come together and create systems which allow anonymous transactions to take place…We are defending our privacy with cryptography, with anonymous mail forwarding systems, with digital signatures, and with electronic money.” It goes on to say “People must come and together (sic) deploy these systems for the common good.” That’s a lot of togetherness described in this manifesto. I’m constantly rebuffed when I use the pronoun ‘we’ to talk about Bitcoin. It’s like some kind of virtual fuck you to say that Bitcoin cares nothing for you or I or your Meetup group. I even wrote an article talking about how Bitcoin moves on with or without you. I still believe that to be true, but I also am mature enough to realize that a community divided can never be as strong as one that moves together and shares a mission.

I commend the Bitcoin Core team and others for spending the time to address code defects in Bitcoin Unlimited and other codebases because it protects us all. I also commend the Bitcoin Unlimited team and a lot of other altcoin development teams for working on technology that they feel is important and could be beneficial to the greater good. But not all developers are created equal. I went to school for Computer Science and spent over a decade programming and I learned enough to know I don’t know that much. Douglas Preston once said “Hubris and science are incompatible”. Developers make mistakes and sometimes unforgivable mistakes, but pretending that your work is infallible is an even bigger mistake.

One of the most disappointing phenomenons coming out of this most recent disaster with Bitcoin Unlimited is the prevalence of postings and comments from respectable individuals who are trying to elevate their status by pointing out this tragic mistake. I will never defend the critical failures presented by any development team in good faith to further my own stature. I have enough respect for others to realize that’s a dick move, but that’s exactly what others are doing.

I still am trying to find someone within this space who embodies what it means to be a true leader. Right now we’ve got a lot of smart and energetic bodies who are more content to be right than to do what’s right. So far the people who are most deserving of respect are the ones with their mouths shut and heads down writing code. For instance what Christopher Jeffrey has managed to do with Bcoin has been buried in all this bullshit. It’s phenomenal work and I’m in awe of what he and his colleagues have pulled off. But they’re not getting massive kudos, it’s being hidden by the noise.

I’ve spent most of the last year talking, conversing and not writing code. More than any other time in my career, hoping to better understand the personalities and motivation behind people’s actions. Every single person I ever spoke to started by saying “I want what’s best for Bitcoin…”. No one thinks they’re fucking up Bitcoin, but we all think that everyone else is fucking up Bitcoin.

Sometimes I sit in my office chair and just wonder silently what side I’m on. Then I remind myself that our goals should align not collide.

• Cypherpunks write code.
• Our code is free for all to use, worldwide.
• We publish our code so that our fellow Cypherpunks may practice and play with it. (OR BREAK IT!)
• We don’t much care if you don’t approve of the software we write.

This post was not meant to admonish people. It was aimed at inspiring people to put aside their serious issues and begin a new phase of working together to compromise and start moving forward again.

Get Segwit out.

Finish Lightning Network and get it to users.

Let everyone use Bitcoin for whatever they want to use it for.

Onward!