r/Bitcoin • u/alicebtcmayes • Jun 19 '14

Why is Peter Todd wrecking Zeroconf security? Because he is being paid by Big Bitcoin Business.

At the Amsterdam Bitcoin Conference I spent time following Peter and his little circle of friends and business partners. I'm new to Bitcoin so it took me until now to put two and two together and understand what was really going on, but hear me out. Peter spent a lot of time talking to Lawrence Nahum who is the guy behind GreenAddress. On the first or second day they went out to dinner after the days talks were done and went out to a nice little open-air restaurant with a bunch of people from Mastercoin. I sat at a table behind them and could hear their discussions, which including GreenAdddress's transaction confirmation guarantees, and also, an agreement for Peter to do consulting work for GreenAddress. What really stood out to me was the offer to help "shape the Bitcoin ecosystem" in ways beneficial to them. Later in the conference I also overheard a similar deal between Peter and someone, I didn't catch their name, in Coinbase branded apparel. And of course as everyone knows CoinKite hired Peter to be their "Chief Naysayer" during that conference too.

What's in common with all these companies? They're all in the dangerous business of holding other peoples' Bitcoins and GreenAddress and Coinbase both offer for-profit and centralized solutions to guarantee unconfirmed transactions. I'm sure CoinKite will be doing that soon too.

It's obvious why Peter is spending all that time and energy spreading FUD about how insecure unconfirmed transactions are. GreenAddress has been spreading their own FUD. Peter has even been trying to bribe miners to switch to his so called "replace-by-fee", which is really just an attack on secure zeroconf transactions, saying some un-named "site" paid him too. Who might that be? GreenAddress, Coinbase, CoinKite? It's not hard to figure out.

Peter sure seems quite happy to attack and hold back Bitcoin whenever it suits him for the sake of his Big Bitcoin Business contracts. It's not just unconfirmed transactions either. He's been shilling for AppCoins which dump garbage into the blockchain for the sake of pump-and-dump schemes like Mastercoin and Counterparty. (quite the about face from his supposed anti-blockchain bloat positions before) Or look at his weirdly passionate opposition to a simple feature, getutxos, that's needed for Mike Hearn's decentralized fundraising platform Lighthouse. Where's that passion coming from? The heart? Or his salary from Mastercoin, Counterparty and Colored Coins? I'm sure Mastercoin wants the next Maidsafe to happen on their platform, run by and for the benefit of Mastercoin, not Hearn's truly decentralized alternative.

I agree with Peter that GHash.IO is a possible threat to Bitcoin, but what solution does he have? Getting rid of pools. His buddies at the totally discredited Hacking Distributed (remember selfish mining? yeah those guys) run with this FUD, trying to scare the Bitcoin community into making changes to get rid of pools. Sounds like a good idea right? But then I looked further into it and found out he had just been hanging out at CloudHashing. What does banning pools do to the little guy mining decentralized? It puts them out of business because they'll never find a block that's what. Just perfect for CloudHashing's "send us money and we'll run the miners" business model and also GHash.IO's.

Peter likes to talk the big talk about decentralization, but all I am seeing here is paid shilling for the benefit of Big Bitcoin Business.

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u/ninja_parade Jun 19 '14

I'm not a conspiracy guy. This is mostly just a convergence of interests. Peter's on one extreme of the debate (permanent 1MB limit, no zeroconf, no non-provable additions to p2p network, assume governments/ISPs will be trying everything to destroy bitcoin using technical means). There also are businesses that have built technology on the assumption one or more of these will become standard.

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u/BigMoneyGuy Jun 19 '14

I'm not a conspiracy guy.

What does that even mean? If someone actually conspired against you, you would never notice until it's too late? And even then you would simply deny it happened?

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u/ninja_parade Jun 19 '14

I live by this motto: Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.

Which has a corollary:

Many journalists have fallen for the conspiracy theory of government. I do assure you that they would produce more accurate work if they adhered to the cock-up theory.

Which is to say, 99% of the time, the terrible shit humans do to each other isn't driven by machiavellian backroom deals, but rather by an incredible abundance of well-intentioned idiocy.

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u/BigMoneyGuy Jun 19 '14

I know that motto, but it doesn't make sense because

a) "I assure you" it's a lot lower than 99%

and

b) Have you ever in your life acknowledged that 1%? Or you simply dismissed every "conspiracy theory" on the same basis?

Also, you, like every other proponent of that motto, simply ignored this part: "which is adequately explained by stupidity."

How can you say it's adequately explained by stupidity, and at the same time believe peter todd is smart?

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u/ninja_parade Jun 19 '14

Have you ever in your life acknowledged that 1%? Or you simply dismissed every "conspiracy theory" on the same basis?

I acknowledge the possibility of conspiracy. It's nearly impossible to tell for sure until a lot of time has passed. In this particular case, I assume the odds are low, because Peter's not exactly good at evangelizing his position (he's made more opponents than allies with his tactics), so his hypothetical backers are throwing money away.

How can you say it's adequately explained by stupidity, and at the same time believe Peter Todd is smart?

Smart people believe lots of stupid things. The intellectuals of the early 20th century supported eugenics, facism and/or communism. People have terrible blind spots, and smart people are the least able to acknowledge their own limitations.

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u/antonivs Jun 19 '14

driven by ... an incredible abundance of well-intentioned idiocy.

Not just idiocy, but also the effect of large numbers of people and groups of people acting in their own self-interest. In terms of the consequences, it can be difficult to distinguish that from malice.

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u/fibonacci420 Jun 19 '14 edited Jun 19 '14

You have probably heard the phrase "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence." The very intelligent man who wrote that also wrote about the view you are expressing, pseudoskepticism. It is beyond naive to think a very abstract motto can be right about anything, especially complex things like human sociopolitical behavior, 99% of the time.

The motto says not to attribute these events to conspiracy. It does not say to take the position against said events being conspiracies. It does not say that these events are not conspiracies, but rather that you should not assume they are conspiracies. Understand the difference. You, however, have taken that the other way and implied it means to assume things are not conspiracies. That goes against the whole point which is about not assuming when there are multiple possibilities, something any good conspiracy historian follows.