The last time I ran bitcoind in support mode (allowing incoming 8333) was on a soekris router which is comparable to an RPI.  That was many years ago, and while it worked, it was very close to not 'working fine'.  Granted, leveldb and some other optimizations have happened since then which helped but things were pushing the envelope, and that is ignoring considerations such at UTXO size and network capacity.  Since I won't allow UPnP on my network and won't run bitcoind on an important machine, I need a sacrifice machine to run it.  I'm currently stuck on satellite here at home which pretty much precludes supporting the network even at the 1MB setting due to total data constraints.  To run bitcoind I have to arrange a remote system that I can trust and that is something of a challenge for a suspicious and careful person.  I'm not about to sacrifice the time and money in support of Bitcoin when the likes of Andresen and Hearn are hanging around trying to kill it.


To understand my thoughts you need to understand that I consider joe-sixpack users to be a liability on all fronts.  'Outrunning regulation' is laughable to me, and idiots do more harm than good when they try to run critical systems.  Multibitch users are not helpful to the network and, as I say, not helpful in the 'critical mass' equation since Bitcoin with it's batch-mode native function is simply not competitive as an exchange currency and never will be a big factor there.  IOW, the kinds of percentages we need for anything remotely resembling 'critical mass' are completely pie-in-the-sky.  Even if Bitcoin worked worth a shit here, a lot of people love big brother and would hate Bitcoin for that reason anyway.  All Bitcoin traction does is to attract attack from TPTB by virtue of it's positive attributes such as lack of counter-party risk.

Time and time again we see idiots losing their money to criminals and hucksters.  Being a Bitcoin enthusiast has been like watching a fight between a skilled boxer and a punching bag and I don't see that changing as long as idiots are using Bitcoin in it's native form.

Sidechains breaks the single-point-of-failure problem which vexes a 'one-size-fits-all' solution and pushes the critical infrastructure support role to people who can handle it.  It also pushes the benefits of a counter-party-risk free solution down to the masses.  Nobody can stop the masses from giving their money to shysters but it's very possible to arrange for the sidechain operates themselves to have a tough time robbing their users (unlike general alts.)

Am I an 'elitist'?  Fuck ya.  At the end of the day, though, my goal is to have everyone who wants to be able to enjoy the benefits of distributed crypto-currencies.  I just don't want to see Bitcoin ruined in the process of trying to achieve this...but am prepared to deal with this eventuality if that's the way the cookie is to crumble.