For anyone concerned about the future of Bitcoin, pay attention:
This is bad news.
Do you get it?
Start digging.
Deep down, I feel that Gregory Maxwell could well be the Anti-Christ. Just look at this Twitter profile. It's set up as a parody of Greg Maxwell, but it reflects a lot of what's happening.
Maxwell is working for a Venture Capital-backed company who has different interests than the founder of Bitcoin and the people using it. Centralized companies as we know have very different plans for society and we all know how that turns out.
Think about that for a second.
Companies have to make enormous profits. Last I heard Blockstream received $12 million in funding. Do you think those VC lily assed investors that pumped Blockstream full of money are not going to push patents onto Bitcoin?
Think again.
The greed machine is here.
Continue digging.
Hey, who does Greg Maxwell remind you of? ps- it's someone in Steemit. Think powertroll.
Here's the Reddit thread that basically sums up what I suspected:
"[–]toomimTommim - Bitcoin Miner - Bitcoin Mining Concern, LTD 70 points 1 day ago*
Great writeup! This "shifting the goal" exactly fits my experience while I was on Bitcoin Classic. But we don't need to speculate on hidden patents— we can observe Blockstream's incentives. Because they are a startup. And startups are dependent on raising money. And to raise money, they boast about their best qualities on their website.
So what does Blockstream boast about? Here's their website from their 2014 seed round. It makes two key points to investors:
Blockstream is the Bitcoin development team. For investors, this means "even if their business plan doesn't work, at least they control the $21B currency and can do something with it."
Blockstream makes Sidechains, which is a solution designed for blockchains that cannot change their consensus rules. Read it from Blockstream themselves, in the first paragraph of the Sidechains PDF:
ENABLING BLOCKCHAIN INNOVATIONS with PEGGED SIDECHAINS
By Adam Back, Matt Corallo, Luke Dashjr, Mark Friedenbach, Gregory Maxwell, Andrew Miller, Andrew Poelstra, Jorge Timón, and Pieter Wuille
Abstract
Since the introduction of Bitcoin in 2009, and the multiple computer science and electronic cash innovations it brought, there has been great interest in the potential of decentralised cryptocurrencies. At the same time, implementation changes to the consensus critical parts of Bitcoin must necessarily be handled very conservatively. As a result, Bitcoin has greater difficulty than other Internet protocols in adapting to new demands and accommodating new innovation.
In other words, Blockstream's founding technology assumes that Bitcoin is hard to upgrade. If Bitcoin becomes easy to upgrade, their technology is useless. Thus, Blockstream's existence is threatened if either of these situations come to pass:
A different development team influences Bitcoin. Suddenly, Blockstream can no longer raise money by "controlling the Bitcoin protocol."
Bitcoin becomes easy to upgrade. This means that Sidechains were never actually needed in the first place, and Blockstream won't have a business model.
As a result, it's in Blockstream's interest to oppose any hard-fork that:
Gives another development team any power, or
Upgrades Bitcoin's features, making Sidechains useless
These are the two reasons that Blockstream "shifts the goal."
Rick /u/falkvinge did a great job describing goal-shifting, but their motivation is not patents. It's that hard-forks threaten their fundraising. Blockstream raised $76M from investors. They have no significant revenue. They are entirely funded by investors. They now have $76M of funding threatened by the possibility of hard-forks that upgrade Bitcoin and introduce new developers. It's in their interest to be hostile to other developers, because then Blockstream employees will be the only Bitcoin developers in town, and they will be able to raise more money. It's in their interest to prevent Bitcoin from improving itself, because then Sidechains might have a business model, and they can raise more money.
I have always appreciated Greg Maxwell's clear writing and creative inventions, starting with his work at Xiph.org, when I first became a fan of his eloquent descriptions of D/A conversion, and extending to CoinJoin and Sidechains. Greg's been a hero of mine. And Pieter Wuille is a brilliant engineer. I hope I get to meet him someday. As a computer scientist, segwit helped me see the light! And HD wallets helped me understand how elegant Bitcoin could be, which I think is a high complement for a mathematician.
But holy cow, has Greg been a jerk. Well you know what, so have my other close colleagues, when they are stressed and put under pressure at a startup without a viable business model. But none of my colleagues have raised $76 Million. Holy cow! That must be a lot of pressure. How are you going to make a working business when you have no business model, with $76M on the line? Man, I bet that pressure could turn a person into a real jackass."
-Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/btc/comments/68kflu/blockstream_having_patents_in_segwit_makes_all/
In conclusion, Blockstream appears to be the Monsanto of Bitcoin.