Bitcoin Reaches a Crossroads With the Scaling Debate, Not a Crisis
Judging from various reports in the media over the past year, Bitcoin is in a serious crisis that threatens its very existence. Longtime Bitcoin developer Mike Hearn even left the ecosystem entirely and claimed the project is now a failed experiment. Of course, Bitcoin has been proclaimed dead roughly 100 other times. Scalability is the main concern in....
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The prolonged scaling issue has turned into what some have been calling bitcoin's existential crisis. As proposals for alternative solutions to Bitcoin Core’s roadmap were put forward and Bitcoin Classic gained traction, the divergence in technical approach has devolved into a heated debate. Emotionally charged disputes on Reddit and Twitter with censorship and personal attacks have divided the community. This split over the protocol harkens back to differences in views that arose at the onset of this technology between economists and those with computer science backgrounds. The former....
Bitcoin's scaling debate is clearly one of its defining moments. It has pitted the user bases sharply against one another whether through endless Reddit debates, digital media or even at the "top" tier of the development teams. It also raised significant issues around centralization and bitcoin’s somewhat awkward relationship with the mostly China-based mining industry. In this post, I will attempt to document different parts of the debate as it played out from different perspectives. I do not consider myself beholden to any specific strand and have attempted to be as neutral as....
Fintech should not be ignored, and various subsectors of this industry are making waves. The fintech industry finds itself at a crossroads right now. Despite the number of financial institutions willing to work with startups increasing every quarter, there is still a large battle ahead. Shaking up the financial industry is a delicate balancing act. Although collaboration is the buzzword right now, the battle lines between banks and fintech startups have not faded by any means. Banks collaborating with fintech incumbents is a positive trend. Entrepreneurs can use all the guidance they can....
Following a months-long debate on how best to scale the bitcoin network to accommodate a greater number of transactions, bitcoin mining firms are voicing their support for a newly introduced proposal called Bitcoin Classic. Though a new entrant to the debate, Bitcoin Classic so far has the support of bitcoin developers including former Bitcoin Core maintainer Gavin Andresen, Bloq CEO Jeff Garzik and Ledger Journal editor Peter Rizun, among others. If adopted, Bitcoin Classic would increase the size of blocks on the bitcoin blockchain to 2MB, up from 1MB today. The proposal has created....
Billed as a potential venue for debate on more heated issues surrounding the long-term viability of the bitcoin network, Scaling Bitcoin saw a who's who of developers decamp to Montreal to talk about the underlying technical issues facing bitcoin yesterday. Often reduced in conversation to mentions of its price or market cap, Scaling Bitcoin succeeded at showcasing the breadth of challenges posed by bitcoin's approach to incentivizing disparate parties to maintain a common and equally beneficial distributed resource. Held in Montreal, day one of the much-anticipated event focused more on....