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Core Bitcoin Devs Leave Project, Create New Currency Called Decred (softpedia.com)

Posted by timothy on from the tough-row-to-hoe dept.

An anonymous reader writes: Core developers in the Bitcoin project have left and started a new currency called Decred. Developers are citing a lack of transparency and a conflict of interests between the group that funds the actual Bitcoin software development, and the decisions taken inside the project. Jacob Yocom-Piatt, CEO at Company 0, who has funded development of Bitcoin since early 2013: "This is in part due to a lack of mechanisms and pathways for funding development work directly from the community, and as a result Bitcoin development is funded by external entities that create conflicts of interest between the developers and the representative power of the community that uses Bitcoin."

9 of 122 comments (clear)

  1. Translation: by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    "We can't make any more money off Bitcoin, so we decided to create our own currency."

    1. Re:Translation: by bazorg · · Score: 5, Insightful

      It's sad but these days the business model seems to revolve around selling tech companies, not selling the output of said tech companies.

    2. Re:Translation: by AK+Marc · · Score: 5, Insightful

      and bitcoin is inherently bad for the environment. The processing needed to create new coins and the constant drain to process transactions is a massive waste of resources. Better would be a government run crypto currency, where the wallet was no less secure than bitcoin, but the coin generation was centralized and done in a way that didn't require increasing processing power. Yes, I know the supporters like that it's a deflationary currency out of the control of a government, but that's also one of the things that will prevent it from being used as a primary currency.

      --
      Learn to love Alaska
  2. Forking is normal by gavron · · Score: 3, Insightful

    That's how open-source projects handle differences in philosophy, transparency, coding direction, etc.

    Reserving billions of dollars worth of digital coin for yourself isn't.

    let's see if they do a better job than Bitcoin in this regard.
    *or dogecoin or the various other derivatives*

    E

    1. Re:Forking is normal by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

      This isn't a fork. It's a pre-mined altcoin which is not made by Bitcoin Coin developers. It claims to be written by the makers of btcsuite, which has nothing to do with Core. That's if you trust this rather anonymous landing page.

  3. Not Bitcoin Core Developers by phantomcircuit · · Score: 5, Insightful

    To avoid any confusion it should be clear that these are the developers of btcd not bitcoin core. As far as I know the only bitcoin core developer working on an altcoin is gavin andresen.

    1. Re: Not Bitcoin Core Developers by radiumsoup · · Score: 4, Insightful

      this. and also, the linked article is just a press release disguised as a story, quoting only the subject of the article without any independant analysis or rebuttal of any kind

    2. Re:Not Bitcoin Core Developers by mrlibertarian · · Score: 4, Insightful

      So, in 2013, when the developers switched from BerkeleyDB to LevelDB and accidentally caused a fork between the miners running bitcoind 0.8 and the miners running bitcoind 0.7, which one was the alternate crypto currency? 0.7 or 0.8? 0.8 had more hashing power behind it, but the developers chose 0.7. What if the developers had chosen 0.8, instead? Would you say that an altcoin was adopted in 2013 if that had happened, since it doesn't matter how many people join in? What if people abandon bitcoin at some point and switch to litecoin? I suppose we could also call that 'switching to an altcoin'. Is it okay to use the exact same terminology to discuss such radically different situations?

    3. Re:Not Bitcoin Core Developers by mrlibertarian · · Score: 4, Insightful

      some people say 'altcoin' when they mean anything that isn't bitcoin-with-the-annointed-blockchain.

      You are correct that some people are advancing this definition, but I do not consider it to be an honest definition; instead, I consider it to be an attempt to conflate two clearly distinct concepts: A competing bitcoin client that would fork the blockchain and an altcoin. The only reason some people are attempting to conflate these concepts is so that they can pretend that censoring discussion of BitcoinXT on a bitcoin message board is not really censorship, but simply the removal of off-topic, altcoin discussion.