The video start off with an amazing speech of Simon Dixon, a former investment banker who left the legacy financial system and founded Bnktothefuture and is an early Bitcoin investor and advocate. The 2nd half (after 57.15 minutes) he goes in debate with Roger Ver about the scaling issue.
As good as speech was, so bad was the debate. Roger was speaking almost all the time and interrupted Simon often to make his own points. Although Simon made great points, he didn't counter most of Rogers arguments so it became a by Roger dominated Bitcoin bash show. I was heavily annoyed by watching this scammer (new audience will fall for it) without anyone countering him, so here my comments:
First the amazing speech and after 57.15 minutes the debate
Rogers arguments and my comments:
Roger: The first of August Bitcoin split into Bitcoin Core and Bitcoin Cash
Bitcoin Core is a software implementation that is open source and permission less and not a coin. Furthermore, Bitcoin didn't split into Bitcoin Core and Bitcoin Cash. Bitcoin Cash split off from Bitcoin with less than 5% consensus and became an altcoin. Bitcoin Cash was a failed upgrade, only when they split off with over 50% consensus they could call their chain Bitcoin. So let’s call it Bcash from now.
Roger put a few people from the audience in line, let them download the bitcoin,com wallet and send 10 dollars worth of BTC and Bcash from the first to the last person in line. This to show that the fees are higher in BTC
Firstly, he is using his own wallet that is clearly designed for Bcash and not optimized for BTC. In good wallets you can set the priority and you will be able to estimate the lowest possible fee to get your transaction through in the first block. He is promoting his own product and creating a worse outcome than it should be with a quality wallet.
Also, comparing only the fees doesn't make so much sense, it is like saying that you can better go to an amusement park when it is raining because then you don't have to wait in line. Most people prefer to wait longer for a better experiment or pay a bit more for quality. Lets compare the fees from every cryptocurrency and see where Bcash is.
He also passes a ten dollar bill through the line and say that BTC is not a currency because it doesn't make it to the end of the line without losing value like the ten dollar bill does. Later he say that the Bcash is still worth 10 dollar, but ALSO with Bcash you pay a fee.
Roger: Core devs want high fees
Roger is bending the words of Core devs here. Some have said that high fees are a sign of succes, because it means that people are willing to pay for the decentralization and security of Bitcoin.
Roger: Core devs make the blocks small to make transactions expensive and Bitcoin less useful
Roger talks like blockspace is free and can be created infinitive. This is certainly not true, when you increase the blockspace everyone involved in the network will need more resources to run their software. This means that the network will become less easy to access and less decentralized over time.
He should have said: Core devs prioritize decentralization and accessibility over transaction costs. This makes a lot of sense, because high fees are relatively easy to fix over time, but you will never be able to fix centralization caused by big blocks.
Roger: Bitcoin lost dominance over altcoins because the blocks are full
It is very normal to lose market share when a lot of competing innovation comes up. The first one in an industry will ALWAYS start off with 100% market dominance. Ethereum and the ICO wave was heavily hyped and took a lot of dominance. ETH is simply not a competitor to BTC, but another use case of the technology. It takes years to build complicated smart contracts on BTC without damaging the core properties. Creating a brand new blockchain specially designed for that purpose is simply way faster.
Simon: You (Roger) showed me your post about Bitcoin Cash in the r/bitcoin Reddit that was deleted as proof of censorship
There are rules in every Reddit, also in r/bitcoin to keep the content as relevant as possible. In r/bitcoin they have a rule that you shouldn't post about other cryptocurrencies, since r/cryptocurrency is designated for this purpose. Since Bcash is an altcoin a post about that subject will be deleted. It makes a lot of sense for me. See how r/btc ended, a BTC reddit with only Bcash posts.
The 4th community guideline of r/bitcoin
Roger: Core put the entire Bitcoin ecosystem at risk by trying Segwit and Lightning first before increasing the block size
Firstly, when Segwit and LN don’t work, a hardfork can always be done when there is full consensus (and the chance for full consensus is big then). At the moment it seems to work fine, we only had about half a year with excessive high fees before we got relevant Segwit adoption and LN on main net (and batching).
If you consider that Segwit (and thus LN) is delayed for more than a year by Roger and his big block friends, we could have never had these extreme high fees in the first place! Roger was actively blocking Segwit a year ago, because it was good technology but no priority (what he said in a scaling debate that time).
Roger: Last year the average transaction waiting time was 10 days
This was only at the moment that the obstruction was worse, most of the year it worked fine. These worse moments were always just around a fork event or Bcash flippening attempt. Spam attacks from Roger or his friends? I think so………….
Roger: The community didn't reach consensus because of censorship
So that means that a small group of people have to decide over an upgrade of a DECENTRALIZED network? Looks like you don’t really understand what decentralization is, but just obsessed with cheap payments. Yes, then Bcash is perfect for you…………
Conclusion:
It was certainly not a debate, but a speech of Roger where he could bash Bitcoin and promote Bcash and his confusing bitcoin,com wallet. I know the reason that Simon Dixon didn't counter him well was not a lack of knowledge or skill, but just the fact that he want to keep the community together and the debate friendly.
Simon Dixon is one of the most important pioneers in the Bitcoin space and I respect him a lot, but he could better only do the speech. Roger is simply to aggressive and impolite to be his opponent and when nobody counters his lies he looks like the winner of the debate.
Disclaimer
This is no financial advice, just my view on the market.
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