*Note: Since publishing this post, I was informed that Mike Hearn late last year had joined “investment bank-coin” private company R3. From Reuters:
Five more banks have joined a global consortium working on ways blockchain technology can be used in financial markets, the firm leading the project said on Thursday, as it brought in experts from the worlds of banking and technology.
BNP Paribas, Wells Fargo, ING, MacQuarie and the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce will join 25 other banks including JPMorgan and Citi in the initiative, led by New York-based financial tech firm R3.
R3 has also brought in bitcoin core developer Mike Hearn, as well as fincancial cryptographer Ian Grigg and bitcoin expert Tim Swanson.
So it all makes a lot more sense now. Hearn had already jumped ship to “protect the status quo coin.” No wonder this guy is so disliked.
Yesterday, Mike Hearn published a piece on Medium aggressively attacking the current state of Bitcoin, specifically proclaiming that the project has failed. The first three paragraphs make his position perfectly clear. Quote:
I’ve spent more than 5 years being a Bitcoin developer. The software I’ve written has been used by millions of users, hundreds of developers, and the talks I’ve given have led directly to the creation of several startups. I’ve talked about Bitcoin on Sky TV and BBC News. I have been repeatedly cited by the Economist as a Bitcoin expert and prominent developer. I have explained Bitcoin to the SEC, to bankers and to ordinary people I met at cafes.
From the start, I’ve always said the same thing: Bitcoin is an experiment and like all experiments, it can fail. So don’t invest what you can’t afford to lose. I’ve said this in interviews, on stage at conferences, and over email. So have other well known developers like Gavin Andresen and Jeff Garzik.
But despite knowing that Bitcoin could fail all along, the now inescapable conclusion that it has failed still saddens me greatly. The fundamentals are broken and whatever happens to the price in the short term, the long term trend should probably be downwards. I will no longer be taking part in Bitcoin development and have sold all my coins.
The lengthy article then proceeds to explain precisely how he arrived at this conclusion. It mainly revolves the failure of Bitcoin XT to take off, something he blames on various parties, from short-sighted Bitcoin developers to Chinese miners.
So what should the Bitcoin community make of all this? Although I’ve been involved in, and following Bitcoin longer than most, I am most certainly not an expert. As such, I don’t feel comfortable responding in detail to the merits or lack thereof inherent in his piece. However, what I can tell you is that all of my friends with considerable technical expertise very much dislike Hearn. While they admit many of Hearn’s prior public criticisms outlining the issues facing Bitcoin are valid, they all think Bitcoin is better off without him. That’s pretty incredible considering how involved Hearn has been in a project they love.
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