Post
Topic
Board Serious discussion
Merits 4 from 1 user
Re: How to end the "BTC Civil War" before it gets worse?
by
ChipMixer
on 16/01/2018, 23:37:16 UTC
⭐ Merited by digaran (4)
The Bitcoin community is deeply divided
It is important to define how it is divided. In my opinion there are people that wants to use Bitcoin (users) and people that wants to sell Bitcoin for a lot of cash (holders). Both groups wants different things or sometimes same things for different reasons.

Low mining fees
Both users and holders want it because nobody wants to pay too much.
Users wants it more because they pay it multiple times.
Holders does not care that much - they need to move it to an exchange once in a while. And they usually cheap out on mining fee.

Lightning Network
Both users and holders want it.
Users want it for micropayments.
Holders want it for good news and reason for BTC price to go higher.

Big blocks
Holders want it more than users.
Big blocks lower mining fees while making running node more expensive. Holders rarely run a node.

Segwit
(Almost) nobody understands what it is.
Users believe it will lower mining fees.
Holders believe it will raise the price.

Privacy
Some users wants privacy.
Most of holders does not care about privacy.

Fiat-BTC exchange
Both users and holders wants it.
Users likes fiat exchanges because it allows merchants to know value of BTC.
Holders likes fiat exchanges because they increase the price.

Crypto-only exchanges
Users does not care.
Holders use them to speculate on price. They do not care which asset "goes to moon". As long as their virtual account is values higher - they are happy.

Online wallets
This is interesting and weird.
Users do not trust them and have no reason to use them.
Holders use online wallet because they brought Bitcoins there. They also prefer keeping altcoins in online wallet / exchange because they... do not care what they brought. They cannot be asked to download and install wallet of their price-skyrocketting coin.

Based on this analysis I believe there is no war here. As a user I do not see why we should care about holders. They will come and go. They will say a lot of things and none of that matters. They have no reason to fight users.