Has Blockstream hijacked Bitcoin?

Jonty Van Id
Aug 9, 2017 · 2 min read

Almost immediately after they had locked in Segwit, Bitcoin core developers and Blockstream announced that they will no longer be holding up to their end of the New York Agreement and will no longer pursue segwit2x which included a block size increase in November as requested by the miners to finalize the agreement.

This classic bait and switch makes me wonder if Blockstream have hijacked Bitcoin for their own profit. Bitcoin was started as an open source software project and intended to be maintained as part of the the free software movement. Today it appears like a single company is fully deciding the direction of the project and even reneging on promises with whole branches of the community, namely miners, users and businesses.

One possible reason for this is that Blockstream has patents on the new bitcoin lightning network topology which will be rolled out in the next 2 years to create privately owned “bit banks” that will process transactions for users off the main bitcoin blockchain. This means a large amount of patent fees and also the ability to dictate who can set up these bit banks and the direction that bitcoin code and miners must follow in the future.

Luckily for the general community we are going through a massive crypto awakening so we will no longer be hamstrung by Bitcoin as other crypto currencies are now starting to be accepted by retailers which means we can also directly buy other coins with paper currency.

So am I worried that this has all transpired and that the space has been tainted with this corporate agenda? Not at all, other new crypto’s like EOS, Maidsafe and Tezzos are on the way and we will one day look back at Bitcoin like a beautiful old antique car that could only travel a few miles an hour.

One thing I do hope though is that the educated writers keep writing and the investment world realizes that the new Blockstream Bitcoin is not the original decentralized Bitcoin by any stretch of the imagination and that supporting it is really just funding a bunch of guys who got in early and decided to milk the situation for everything its worth.

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