For much of Bitcoin’s life, it was unquestioned. When Satoshi Nakamoto released his creation into the world, digital currencies and blockchains were mere concepts, making Bitcoin the first real attempt at creating an asset that isn’t tied to traditional payment rails, or an underlying governmental system.
But, many technologists and innovators have concluded that they can do better than what Satoshi has done, creating hundreds and thousands of spin-offs, better known as altcoins, in the process. And sadly enough, some of these cryptocurrency creators have taken to public forums to draw attention to Bitcoin’s inefficiencies, shunning the project that tacitly spawned their creation.
Brendan Blumer Bashes Bitcoin’s Inefficiencies
Brendan Blumer, the chief executive of the Hong Kong-based Block.one, the development group behind the EOS blockchain, recently took to the stage of the DC Blockchain Summit at the Chamber of Digital Commerce (CODC). While Blumer was on stage for a panel on blockchain’s applications in government, business, and other sectors, he brought up Bitcoin.
And what he had to say wasn’t exactly cheery, nor did it sit well with the crypto public.
The EOS co-creator did admit that he sees Bitcoin, the world’s first cryptocurrency and blockchain application, as entirely transformative, but that the network still has drastic shortcomings.
CEO of https://t.co/oxZfkUbjGr @BrendanBlumer spreading ridiculous mischaracterizations about Bitcoin at a @DigitalChamber event. pic.twitter.com/h5bB8ybC6X
— vake (@vakeraj) April 6, 2019
Blumer remarks that Bitcoin transactions, in actuality, cost well above the transaction fee stipulated by the miner market alone, with the actual cost of processing a peer-to-peer transfer potentially being as high as $50 to $100. In subsequent Twitter comments, Blumer continued this narrative. Trying to rationalize comment that BTC transactions actually cost more than the fee in and of itself, he drew attention to miner subsidies, explaining that this supply emission should actually account for the cost of securing processes.
He then poked fun at Bitcoin’s transactional throughput and block times, explaining that to transfer BTC to a peer or business, it may take one hour, even if the “three transactions per second” limit isn’t already being satisfied. This, of course, is an exaggeration on Blumer’s end, as the widespread adoption of Segwit addresses allow for the network to process up to seven transactions per second, but his dissatisfaction with Bitcoin’s technical capabilities was made clear.
But He Isn’t Exactly Bearish On Bitcoin
While Blumer’s comments make it sound like he only sees a downside for Bitcoin in the future, his Twitter rebuttals make it clear that this isn’t exactly the case. In a tweet issued in mid-March, Blumer proudly proclaimed that he believes in the narrative that Bitcoin is the next coming of gold if you will — a digital store of value that has commodity-esque characteristics.
In fact, he writes that he expects for the cryptocurrency to replace gold as the leading store of value over the next two decades, a sentiment held by the Winklevoss Twins, Willy Woo, Mike Novogratz, among other crypto industry stakeholders.
Over the next two decades, #Bitcoin will replace #gold as the leading commodity to store value
— Brendan Blumer (@BrendanBlumer) March 17, 2019
Responding to the critique he received for his monologue at CODC, he doubled-down on the idea that Bitcoin still has a valid, albeit relatively limited, value proposition.
Blumer writes that he loves the world’s first cryptocurrency due to its potential to become the digital gold, but that it is inherently not optimized to compete in the realm of smart contracts, decentralized applications, and other use cases. In other words, he is explaining that BTC transactions may be slow and relatively costly, but there’s enough space for both EOS and Bitcoin to exist in a decentralized, digital-based world.
And that may just be how Satoshi Nakamoto wanted it. As Dan Held, the co-founder of Interchange, explained in an extensive Twitter thread, the Bitcoin creator likely had many chances to change the cardinal rules — 21 million supply limit, ten-minute blocks, one megabyte blocks, etc. — of his brainchild, but decided against it.
