But your being politically correct and non confrontational by leaving out one major factor that is driving the debate under the hood. And that is Blockstream. They, like Bitcoin, are also about money. Except I'd argue, by crippling Bitcoin, they are about USD's.
The conflict of interest is a real concern, to be sure, but at this point I think it more likely that they are sincere. At least Greg, because he's always been a bit of a pessimist on Bitcoin scalability as a whole, being so code-focused, it really is quite consistent for him to side with Blockstream. Adam I suspect a bit more, since missing out on Bitcoin and all the financial gains despite having created part of it has to hurt, but I'm not at all willing to
assume bad faith on his part either. At this point it's basically a social club for their point of view, and I do think the money influence will be corrupting as time wears on, but I'm skeptical that it's having a substantial effect yet. I
In any case, the main point is that it could be but we simply can't know. We can suspect, and it is probably good to needle them about it, but actually jumping to that conclusion as a decided fact doesn't seem helpful to me.
The conflict of interest is a simple matter of the facts.
Whether it is problematic to the point of whether any recusal is warranted is another matter entirely.
Likely its sufficient to examine on an issue by issue basis.