Give them an inch and they will take a mile

There is a popular Chinese (no pun intended, just coincidental) idiom : 得寸进尺 — If You Give Someone an Inch, They Will Take a Mile.

.. and I cannot help but feel this is as close to the truth as ever in Bitcoin.

What started as a totally innocent mechanism to allow miners to signal when they have updated their software/nodes/back-end somehow has translated to certain miners thinking they have control and is now being hijacked by Bitcoin Unlimited to give miners total control over the block-size.

Bitcoin Unlimited in itself does not change the block-size, what it does is give power to the miners to decide.

I am clearly not alone when I say that this is “utterly absurd!” — this notion that miners and miners alone can decide the block-size shows clear fundamental misunderstandings of the Bitcoin ecosystem.

And what is even more concerning is that the signs are in-front of our eyes and we are ignoring them. It has been known since forever that miners have self interest at heart and certain miners have already shown (a large percentage of users, wallets, exchanges and technical experts in this space want segwit activated yet they continue to push an agenda to power grab) that the Bitcoin ecosystem cannot trust them to make decision which are in the interest of Bitcoin. This alone should be reason enough to ensure that they do not have control to change the block-size at will - why? because this is only the beginning (remember, give them an inch and they will take a mile) — what will be next?

Vinny was absolutely right when he said last week that as users of the Bitcoin ecosystem we should vote with our wallets. This is not about Core vs XT vs Classic vs Unlimted vs xyz — it is much much more than that, it is time now more than ever to make it clear that we will not accept a Bitcoin which allows miners to control the block-size.