| There is both an overt development bureaucracy of Bitcoin and a shadow group. The overt effort is managed by MIT https://dci.mit.edu/ MIT developers have merge access to the Bitcoin official repo, which is truly the real power. The shadow is who influences these people, and why. It really isn't conspiratorial - it's the long tail of influencers, media, meet-up groups, conventions, exchanges, and people who have a stake in Bitcoin. Anytime there is a major disagreement, there is a fork. This is how numerous forks were created, the biggest of which are Bitcoin Cash, which later itself forked into Bitcoin Cash SV. A fork is just a group of developers who disagree with the official Bitcoin bureaucracy at MIT. If these dissenters have enough support then the new coin has value. Bitcoin is old and stable, and through its age and stability it has gained trust. Major changes to Bitcoin simply won't happen anymore. The Lightning Network required very minor changes to the core protocol, and using Bitcoin's constrained tooling developers have (heroically!) engineered a scaling mechanism. It is not yet perfect nor easy to use, but over time the client services around it will improve. The extreme wariness of core Bitcoin developers ensures that trust is maintained in the protocol. A major disaster in Bitcoin would be very bad for the whole industry. If you don't like Bitcoin, just create your own coin, or fork from Bitcoin! Such is how so many new coins are made. |
I don't think meetups/conventions have much role in Bitcoin development either. I stopped going to them entirely because every event is reliably taken over by ICO/altcoin pumpers-- groups who stand to gain a lot by expanding their audience and are willing to pay to send representatives to events.