[nullc]

> Step 1: Buy off

We founded the company.

> all of the top developers

A couple people out of a community of around 50-200 depending on the phase of the moon.

> Step 2: Refuse to support/fix basic network operations

Uh. You know that Bitcoin is a decenteralized system that no one controls; right? We do a lot of fixes, but we're not your personal code monkies. There is a LOT going on in Bitcoin, and it's working pretty darn well at the moment.

> Step 4: Censor any forum

Via our magical mind control rays, I suppose? Blockstream doesn't control or influence any forums.

Wheres your playbook? Which step does "Create throwaway accounts on hacker news to slander people" fit? Is it before "profit" or "suppression of inconvenient technology"?

[wellthissukz]

Again, these are lies from Gregory Maxwell (Blockstream CTO).

Please provide details on funding. Specifically, how much AXA paid?

"A couple people out of a community of around 50-200 depending on the phase of the moon."

Again a lie. The top Core devs are Blockstream employees.

Blockstream has created a toxic environment and a huge ivory tower.

"Uh. You know that Bitcoin is a decenteralized system that no one controls; right? We do a lot of fixes, but we're not your personal code monkies. There is a LOT going on in Bitcoin, and it's working pretty darn well at the moment."

Meanwhile 80%+ of the hasrate is concentrated in a single country and in the hands of a handful of entities.

Ironically, Blockstream goes graet lengths to exploit this (HK roundtable farce).

"Via our magical mind control rays, I suppose? Blockstream doesn't control or influence any forums."

People associated with BlockstreamCore support censored and manipulated forums, interestingly owned by a single individual (theymos)

Gregory, you are the most pathetic individual in the Bitcoin space.

[nullc]

> Please provide details on funding. Specifically, how much AXA paid?

Dunno, not enough to be broken out on the reports I have. They're not an investor that I've ever met with-- we have a lot of investors. Though it's a cute technique that y'all have been using where you try asking something that would be confidential, to try to inhibit a response on the long list of leading questions that follows.

>> "A couple people out of a community of around 50-200 depending on the phase of the moon."

> Again a lie. The top Core devs are Blockstream employees.

I gave a breakout in another post; if you want to go by top you end up with three out of the top 10, all of whom were founders of the company. wooo.

> Blockstream has created a toxic environment and a huge ivory tower.

What does that even mean? or another way, how could someone falsify that claim?

> Meanwhile 80%+ of the hasrate is concentrated in a single country and in the hands of a handful of entities

Unfortunately, the block size limit was set too large and this created outsized returns for large consolidations. More recent improvements have caught things up a bit but it will take a while for the damage to equalize out.

> People associated with BlockstreamCore support censored and manipulated forums,

What the @#$@ are you talking about? Citations? Or are you just saying that anyone of the vast majority of people who are supportive of our work is "associated"?

[fraggle222]

>Unfortunately, the block size limit was set too large and this created outsized returns for large consolidations.

Can you clarify this statement?

[ptokb3]

Thanks for answering Greg.

This isn't a throw-away account. I've lurked for years without needing to become involved. The larger public needs to know that:

> We founded the company.

Obviously you're the CTO but not all of the other 'employees' paid by your company founded it with you.

> You know that Bitcoin is a decentralized system that no one controls; right?

Actually you've locked down the codebase. Any one developer can make a common sense change contentious and prevent it from being merged. That's kinda centralized don't you think? Getting a few people to disagree is a pretty low barrier if a government was bent on destroying Bitcoin. We need decentralized development to match Bitcoin's decentralized nature.

> Bitcoin, and it's working pretty darn well at the moment.

Does that include transactions that don't go through even with correct fees? What do you say to the new user that did nothing wrong and has to wait 3 days for his coins to reappear in his wallet because he tried to send a transaction during a high-volume time? Does that also include overly expensive fees approaching 50cents and could reach several dollars within the year?

Limiting transaction velocity and making transactions artificially expensive is a bad idea at this point in Bitcoin's existence.

You need to stop ignoring that network operations are failing.

> Via our magical mind control rays, I suppose..

No, by calling alternate code bases altcoins - even though they operate on the same blockchain - you have setup an environment where they are not allowed to be honestly discussed at length on /r/bitcoin. Further, even though positive posts are banned, negative posts about other Bitcoin wallet/mining software are allowed. Any outside person can clearly see that is censorship. Moderators point to CoreDevelopers as the reason for that censorship. I also know you know Theymos so you can't say you're not buddies with him. I'm sure if you wanted you could ask for it and have posts removed/deleted.

[nullc]

> but not all of the other 'employees' paid by your company founded it with you

The "top developers of Bitcoin" you were referring to did.

> Actually you've locked down the codebase.

So, there is a concrete claim of an action. But you're not specific. Locked down how? What are you referring to? Please provide hyperlinks for clarity.

> We need decentralized development

Every developer has their own codebase, the community tends to cooperate because its efficient and makes sense. But participating at all requires making your own fork, and anyone can at any time promote their fork for public use. Some have, but the ones created to rewrite Bitcoin's rules with a hardfork so far have not been supported by engineers and languish largely stillborn.

> Does that include transactions that don't go through even with correct fees?

I'm not aware of any issues like that, can you point me to a trouble ticket?

> Limiting transaction velocity

How have we done that? The design of Bitcoin and physical reality create limits and select trade-offs.

> No, by calling alternate code bases altcoins

We have?

> even though they operate on the same blockchain

The people who are calling things like the deceptively named Bitcoin "classic" altcoins do so specifically because when they activate they will not operate on the same blockchain.

> you have setup an environment where they are not allowed to be honestly discussed at length on /r/bitcoin. [...] I'm sure if you wanted you could ask for it

I, nor anyone at my company, have any control over /r/bitcoin's policies, and-- in fact-- I argued vigorously against them (before I saw what the unmoderated feed looked like-- a non-stop stream of brand new sockpuppet accounts promoting rule rewrites, often with dishonest claims, outnumbering all other posts 20:1)...

> I also know you know Theymos

What does that mean? I've had a few conversations with him, yes-- and in the ones where I tried to convince him to not use a fairly restrictive moderation policy in /r/bitcoin I failed.

[ptokb3]

Thanks again for the reply.

By the expression "locked down" I mean that no reasonable change can happen if any one of the main core devs don't want it to. Some of the core devs think the max-blocksize is too large. I won't name names, but a modest larger blocksize is reasonable.

Additionally hard-forks are the safest way to make large important changes. They are safer than soft-forks (limbo) and for the blocksize one would be required. I'm sure you know all of this, but the reason for a hard fork was because it's an important and critical change. At one point it was on the core scaling roadmap I believe (or promised by your CEO to Chinese miners in Hong Kong).

> when they activate they will not operate on the same blockchain

Hard-forks have happened twice before and people aren't calling the current version an altcoin of the original Bitcoin. Bitcoin Classic's change has safety mechanisms like a 30 day grace period before activation, it wouldn't disrupt time-locked coins, and it has other checks that prevent attacks on hard to process transactions. It also only changes if there is overwhelming miner consensus well above the regular 51% 'Nakamoto' consensus. Unanimous consensus works for trivial matters but the big stuff, the important stuff should go with a large majority and not be held back by a stubborn minority. Classic also removes the hard-fork if it doesn't happen by a certain date.

> I tried to convince him to not use a fairly restrictive moderation policy in /r/bitcoin I failed.

I'm glad your being vocal about the censorship and expressed your opinion to Theymos. An entire sub of 19,000+ users arose out of those policies. On /r/bitcoin most of the posts are positive white-washed pump the price news rather than genuine discussions. A big genuine thanks for talking to him about it, and I hope you can keep that process moving towards non-censorship.

You mentioned: > stream of brand new sockpuppet accounts

People created new accounts because their main accounts were being banned for talking about the benefits of on-chain scaling. Sure some of those were FUD, but a lot of them were also genuine.