Cryptanalyst debunks outlandish Bitcoin Core dev comments

For an organization that claims to believe in consensus, Bitcoin Core—or at least, some of its members—just couldn’t resist spewing vitriol aimed at intimidating the rest of the community.

Bitcoin Core, if you’re just joining us, is insisting that blockchain technology’s 1MB size limit is doing fine in its current form, even though an increase in block size will pave the way for a more robust bitcoin environment. Core believes that among other things, increasing the blockchain size to anything beyond the current 1MB cap will threaten cryptocurrency’s decentralized state, and some of its advocates, such as Blockstream co-founder Greg Maxwell, has demonstrated a willingness to stridently attack anyone who dares suggest otherwise.

And it’s not just Maxwell who will go to great lengths—yes, even trolling—to defend their “faith” stance on the block size issue. Eli Afram, a developer, business analyst and cryptanalyst, has listed “some of the most outrageous and outlandish comments from the Core dev team” in a CoinGeek post.

First on Maxwell’s list is Blockstream co-founder Mark Friedenbach’s statement that “slow confirmation, high fees will be the norm in any safe outcome.” To which, Afram commented: “‘Slow’ anything in software is a detriment to user experience. You learn that in your first year of software dev 101.”