It began with a 1000BTC wage between Charlie Lee & co. vs. Roger Ver, when Trace Mayer, a big whale Bitcoin investor stepped in and said that "25x 1000BTC would represent a significant enough portion of Roger Ver’s holdings to constitute as skin in the game"
- an event where both parties are putting money where their mouth is on the Segwit2x debate.
Background:
If you aren't familar with the current situation regarding Bitcoin and the upcomming Segwit2x hardfork occuring in November, which is the most contentious issue to date in Bitcoin politics, here some impressions and insights:
How the wager began:
Charlie Lee, founder of Litecoin (LTC) and well known acter against S2X, made a public call-out:
"Lets do a public 1:1 trade. My Segwit2x 250 BTC for your non-2x 250 BTC after Nov HF. No HF, no trade. @jgarzik @ErikVoorhees @barrysilbert"
— Charlie Lee [NO2X] (@SatoshiLite) September 29, 2017
Public discussions across social media platforms such as Bitcointalk, Reddit and Twitter, has become very polemic and the debate developed in more a emotional than objective way.
For the respective parties, the wager offern an opportunity to add skin in the game and turn away from polemics into facts.
Jeff Garzik (arguably the sole publicly dentifiable developer pushing for Segwit2x) stated the following prior to Charlie’s challenge:
"The Legacy chain will take years to get back to normal, if ever. It will be basically unusable due to rapid departure of hashrate."
— Jeff Garzik (@jgarzik) September 29, 2017
If this is his belief (and not a paltry attempt at spreading unsubstantiated FUD), then taking this trade would:
solidify public confidence in the S2X fork
be incredibly profitable
So far, there wasn't any response from Garzik, Nor Voorhees and Silbert for that matter.
But Roger Ver, Bcash proponent, showed up:
"Why wasn't invited? I'll gladly accept! You are economically illiterate if you think restricting the supply of block space is a good thing. https://t.co/oEneGQeCql"
— Roger Ver (@rogerkver) September 29, 2017
Roger Ver claimed, that only an, Quote "economically illiterate person" would Bitcoin.
Charlie Lee's answer:
"Roger, I accept. Please, no need to attack me in your tweet!
Since we are both public figures, our word is our bond. Talk later. Cheers! https://t.co/tpQ0Sorroj"
— Charlie Lee [NO2X] (@SatoshiLite) September 29, 2017
The conversation of Charlie and Roger set the ball rolling -> others joined in to make it a 1000BTC (approx. 4,300,000$) bet.
...Trace Mayer thinks that 1000BTC isn't enough:
"250 BTC not cool; 25,000 BTC cool. If GMax does atomic swaps to cryptographically ensure enforceability then let's play @rogerkver"
— Trace Mayer (@TraceMayer) September 30, 2017
This kind of battle leads to questions what the intentions of Ver and the other opponents are. Will Bcash lose it's relevance on the
cryptomarket because, wouldn't the S2X coin outperform Bcash in every way?
Roger Ver begins to establish plausible deniability for backing out of the escalating bet.
He calls the idea of using atomic swaps to make the wager binding in code “retarded”.
I would advice everyone to keep an eye on both parties, November will be crucial.