Samson Mow of Blockstream and Roger Ver of Bitcoin.com squared off at the Deconomy Conference in Seoul over bitcoin's future. The two men disagreed on scaling, Bitcoin Cash, and the Lightning Network,
Samson Mow of Blockstream and Roger Ver of Bitcoin.com squared off at the Deconomy Conference in Seoul over bitcoin's future. The two men disagreed on scaling, Bitcoin Cash, and the Lightning Network, each laying out distinct philosophies on how the cryptocurrency should expand.
Ver pushed for rapid expansion. He argued that blockchain size poses no real obstacle as hardware improves, and he worried that second-layer solutions like the Lightning Network would pull power away from the base network. "Samson [Mow] personally and a lot of his friends, they say we need to build everything on top of layer two and will strangle layer one to do it. They don't quite use that word, but we've seen exactly what the effect [has been] even if they had good intentions. The effect was that Bitcoin lost its first mover advantage. The market cap of altcoins has skyrocketed, the number of transactions happening on the Bitcoin core network today is about half of what it was in December of last year. Bitcoin core is having negative merchant adoption around the world [while] Bitcoin Cash is having positive merchant adoption around the world."
Mow countered that keeping the barrier low for running a full node matters for decentralization. He saw blockchain bloat as a path toward centralization and rejected larger blocks as a permanent fix. Instead, he advocated for layer two solutions that stay cryptographically linked to the main chain. "I think [when] scaling Bitcoin, we have to take into consideration the computer science aspect of it. We can't just make things up. […] When Bitcoin [Core] is scaling they're actually making sync times faster so even though the Bitcoin blockchain is far bigger today […] we can still synchronize it, you know, in a day or so. If you're running in exchange you actually need to validate all the transactions. If someone sends you a thousand Bitcoins you have to make sure it confirms before you credit them with a thousand Bitcoins to trade, you can't just hope that it confirms. […] To do that, you actually need the software to scale and to function and blockchains inherently don't scale because they are flood networks where every transaction goes out every node. So, the analogy I like to give is that if YouTube was decentralized, every time you post a video, everybody in this room would have to download that video, in order for everything to continue, and that is very burdensome. So, the way to scale the Bitcoin blockchain would be to move to layer two scaling solutions where everything is cryptographically linked to the main chain."
When asked which coin counted as "real" Bitcoin, Mow gave a straightforward answer. "If you look at all the markets, all the exchanges, Bitcoin is BTC and then Bcash is BCH so I think the name is clear what people have accepted right now. But the litmus test is this, if you want to be paid with a Bitcoin today and I give you something else, will you accept that as Bitcoin? I think that's the easiest way to tell what is Bitcoin right? If you ask for payment in Litecoin and I send you Dogecoin you won't accept that, right? So, the simplest test is just to ask someone if they want to Bitcoin then which do you want me to send you?"
The debate turned personal when Ver brought up how Mow had walked out of a speech by Craig Wright and allegedly called him "Faktoshi." Ver presented this as an insult. The story backfired when Ver then lavished praise on Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin, calling him one of the sharpest minds in crypto. During the Q&A session, Buterin asked why "that fraud" Craig Wright had been invited to speak. The audience cheered, as did Mow. Ver had attempted to shame Mow over walking out on Wright's talk, only to have Buterin voice the same criticism moments later.
Mow referred to Bitcoin Cash as "Bcash." Ver took offense to the term. He has fought against that label before, though his specific objection remained unstated. The most unsettling moment came when Ver connected bitcoin policy to infant mortality. He claimed that Bitcoin Core's approach had slowed crypto adoption worldwide, and that slower adoption meant less economic freedom for the global poor, which he linked to preventable deaths. "Of course people that appreciate economic freedom are going to be upset, because we've delayed the adoption of cryptocurrencies around the world by several years because of the censorship and propaganda and the diversion of the Bitcoin scaling roadmap. So, that means more babies are dying in countries around the world because they have less economic freedom. More people are starving to death because they have less economic freedom. People are literally dying because of this, I'm not exaggerating. This is a life-and-death matter around the world and more people are dying because we haven't been able to bring more economic freedom to the world as quickly as we otherwise would have been. And people like to make jokes about how Bitcoin isn't for people that make less than $2 a day, well I have news for you, bitcoin is for everybody and bitcoin is alive and well in the form of Bitcoin Cash."
The audience laughed at first. When Ver finished, some cheered. Mow responded by noting that new technologies always take time to mature. "Just like when email first appeared, not everyone was using email. People still used normal mail. Not everyone had a computer and I think that's the part the Bitcoin Core developers are focused on, which is keeping the requirement low to participate in the network. If you don't have a computer you cannot use email no matter how much I hope to help somebody right? But we can lower the barrier by making the computer requirement less strict."
Asked directly why animosity exists between the two camps, Mow pointed to Ver's insistence that Bitcoin Cash is Bitcoin itself. "Well I think now that you have your own coin [and] BCH people have their own chain to promote, they can talk about the benefits of that chain and extol the virtues of that chain. There doesn't really need to be any animosity. I think people that are for Bitcoin, Bitcoin-airs, Bitcoin HODLers, they don't like it because of how you branded it the same as Bitcoin. It's like if you have the Deconomy [conference] and someone made Deconomy Cash and then started selling tickets, then I don't think the organizers of the Deconomy would like that very much. I think that is where the animosity stems from."
Mow maintained a calmer demeanor throughout and interrupted less often than Ver did. Yet determining who won likely hinged more on what people thought before the event than on what either man actually argued. This fight over scaling shows no signs of ending.
