x-post of one of my reddit post. (disclaimer: I am employed by Blockstream)

It's helpful to evaluate the contribution of Blockstream developers to Bitcoin Core versus other non-Blockstream developers in the last year. Let's see

Greg Maxwell: 46

Jorge Timon: 17

Pieter Wuille: 163 (the only developer at Blockstream dedicated full time to Core development)

Mark Friedenbach: 0

Patrick Strateman: 31

Warren Togami: 6

Adam Back: 0

Greg Sanders: 32

Glenn Willen: 0

Total commits for listed Blockstream developers: 295

Wladimir Van Der Laan: 210

Marco Falke: 170

Corey Fields: 152

Jonas Schnelli: 87

Suhas Daftuar: 73

Alex Morcos: 65

fanquake: 56

Pavel Janik: 45

Total commits for listed non-Blockstream developers: 858

So about 35%. 15% if we remove Pieter, but I can confidently say everyone at Blockstream is hugely proud of his contributions and in no way shape or form are we interested in diminishing his accomplishment. From my perspective he has been the single most important contributor to Bitcoin development for many years now.

In short, this narrative is a huge disrespect to every other contributors building the software we all depend on. The obsession of certain people to lend power to specific individuals is simply an attempt to shut down their ideas by attacking their character.

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I would add that most of the Core contributors working at Blockstream had been contributing before the company was founded and certainly did not "infiltrate the Bitcoin development team".

The previous lead developer had barely contributed anything before he quit out of his own volition after a series of failed attempt to politicize Bitcoin and force through a contentious hard fork. The last straw was of course when he was naively led to believe that notorious scam artist Craig Wright was Satoshi.

With regards to the "off-blockchain" solutions you refer to. Here's a couple of facts:

Fact 1: The Lightning Network was created by Bitcoin developers not involved with the Core project

Fact 2: No Core developer is involved in a business whose revenue model revolves around the success of the Lightning Network

Fact 3: There is very little profit to be made from operating the Lightning Network infrastructure/protocol.

Fact 4: The Lightning Network will happen regardless of the outcome of the current contention.

Fact 5: Bitcoin developers have no control over the consensus code being enforced by independent peers participating in the network. Bitcoin is a voluntary system.

Quantifying commits does not correlate to who is controlling the architecture of a codebase. Someone can control the architecture with a single commit, provided that commit is large enough.

Burden of proof is on you. There isn't any magic pixie does here-- if it were the case someone would show it, but they can't.

I'm not arguing either side; I don't know enough to decide either way. I'm just pointing out a specious argument.

What I can say is within this thread that both sides have spewed either enough propaganda or perhaps truth or perhaps their truth or maybe alternate truth, see my point is, there is enough confusion in all this bickering that I'll never trust Bitcoin again.

I suggest you return to your economic and history books. Gold has no intrinsic value as you would probably call it. It is only because of some VERY distinctive properties that are not found in other metals that gold was ultimately selected as the better store of value available. Its only value comes from a market agreement.

Bitcoin is essentially the same as it replicates the same properties of gold while having a more predictable supply and features that allow it to be used more commonly as a currency, unlike gold.

Also, unlike Bitcoin, gold remains gold without the need for a constant supply of electricity or technology. It's an element, and part of the reason it worked as a store of value was because "ooh shiny" and zero upkeep.

Doing what you suggested would very much destroy any value existing in BTC. The USD is not actually a reference in terms of store of value.

It's deflationary property is a feature, not a flaw.

Not proposing doing anything to Bitcoin, it's an idea for controlling the supply of a new crypto-currency.

| It's deflationary property is a feature, not a flaw.

I studied this while getting my economics degree. Methinks you are missing some important behavioral dynamics related to interest rate interactions with consumption and investment.

Here's a lesson from the fed: http://www.philadelphiafed.org/education/teachers/resources/...

exponential growth of other technologies did not stop until they reached mainstream adoption. Bitcoin is very far from that

So you are saying once it reaches mainstream adoption you risk that the price will start dropping? Seems like a pretty bad road to go down.

> * Bitcoin the Network may ultimately be more valuable than BTC the currency

This is a fundamental misunderstanding of Bitcoin. Because each and every Bitcoin function as a sort of "token" that provides access to this payment network, their value is closely tied to the value of the network. For Bitcoin to become an international payment gateway system, liquidity requires every Bitcoin to be worth a lot.

I guess I mean "valuable" in the intrinsic sense, not the financial sense. If, for example, in the model that Stripe outlines, the Bitcoin network ends up powering the Bank-to-Bank side of things (away from the consumer), only a handful of counterparties are going to be involved on the BTC side of things. Millions of consumers may use Stripe/whoever to send $$ to millions of other consumers, but that might all be handled by a (relatively) few BTC flying back and forth in batches on the back-end, which doesn't necessarily require a large per-BTC price.

I know not a perfect example but that's my gist.

I understand but I'm afraid you are being misled by the article.

While I believe it is an interesting scenario. I do not envision something like that will happen. The only reason it might is for its "consumer protection" value.

I appreciate that Greg realises some of the promises of Bitcoin but the true value for "billions of people" is not an optimized "clearing house". I expect Bitcoin to scale to a point where the store of value and liquidity concerns are non-existent.

At this point, high-inflation economies will turn to Bitcoin, and not gateways that will convert their already worthless currencies to USD or whatever. This provided value will ultimately catch on over here at which point some will find it largely preferable to hold BTC and not their "normal currency. Hell, some already do.

> Millions of consumers may use Stripe/whoever to send $$ to millions of other consumers, but that might all be handled by a (relatively) few BTC flying back and forth in batches on the back-end, which doesn't necessarily require a large per-BTC price.

That depends on what you mean by "large per-BTC price". It requires a certain minimum BTC price to move a certain amount of money when settling in bitcoin. You can't move $1M USD in one Bitcoin transaction if a single bitcoin is worth 1 cent and there are only 20 million of them. So the bitcoin price measured in a certain currency limits the maximum transaction volume for that currency when settling in bitcoin.

Secondly, and perhaps more importantly, it requires great liquidity/market depth. One must be able to buy or sell a lot of bitcoins without affecting the price. This is the essence of money: a high-liquidity commodity.

> I guess I mean "valuable" in the intrinsic sense, not the financial sense.

When settling in bitcoins, they need to have value in "the financial sense". That's a requirement.

Agreed. The people who say that don't understand that something that Bitcoin got right (though it can be improved) are the incentives. People looking after their own self-interest will make Bitcoin work. That's why all those clones that tried to remove the currency part failed horribly. Eg: "It's like Bitcoin's blockchain, but for a social network!".

If one uses BTC primarily for exchange, one doesn't care what the "value" is. The only priorities are the convenience and reliability of the conversions into and out of BTC. These are threatened only a little by volatility, and not at all by actual BTC value.

Agree for the most part, so long as there's sufficient liquidity in the target fiat currency.

The value of individual bitcoins depends as heavily on how long bitcoins are held as it does on the transaction volume.

If there are 20 million BTC in active circulation and the bitcoin network processes 20 billion USD per day in transactions, than the "intrinsic value" could be $7000/BTC if the average bitcoin is held for a week between transactions (eg, you are paid biweekly in BTC and spend them constantly), or it could be $40/BTC if the average bitcoin is held for an hour between transactions (eg, people hold fiat and the BTC are in constant use by the gateways).

A high intrinsic value really requires adoption both as a payment network and as a store of value.