Date: Mon, 10 Feb 2014 12:25:06 -0600
From: Troy Benjegerdes <hozer@hozed.org>
To: Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell@gmail.com>
Message-ID: <20140210182506.GM3180@nl.grid.coop>
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Cc: bitcoin-development@lists.sourceforge.net
Subject: Re: [Bitcoin-development] MtGox blames bitcoin
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On Mon, Feb 10, 2014 at 08:45:03AM -0800, Gregory Maxwell wrote:
> On Mon, Feb 10, 2014 at 8:30 AM, Troy Benjegerdes <hozer@hozed.org> wrote:
> > Name me one single person with commit access to the bitcoin github repository
> > who is *independent* of any venture capital or other 'investment' connections.
> 
> I am, unless you count the fact that I own some Bitcoin and some
> mining hardware as "'investment' connections" (and that case your
> comments are worthless).
> 
> (By not naming anyone else I don't mean to imply there are no others,
> but I don't want to speak for anyone else. Nor would I necessarily
> expect the other part(ies|y) to step forward, since this mostly
> appears to be an invitation to step up and be attacked.)

Thank you.

I also appreciate your commentary[1], and willingness to list your investment
position. What I'm concerned about are people who have signed non-disclosure 
agreements or who's salary/equity/whatever depend on people who are experts
at manipulating markets to take naive investors money.

Independent is also a state of mind as much as it is about financial connections.

What pisses me off here is that a huge amount of wealth just changed hands based
on MtGox's press release, and it stinks of insider trading. I still maintain the
best outcome would be for MtGox to AGPLv3 release their code, and then those of 
us that understand it would be able to have a public technical discussion about
how to fix it, and MtGox would still maintain their intellectual property
ownership position.

This, however, cuts off a significant revenue stream for people who take money
making market bets 5 minutes before the information goes public, so I expect
the likelyhood of such an outbreak of sanity is quite low.

[1] http://www.cryptocoinsnews.com/2014/02/10/mt-gox-blames-bitcoin-core-developer-greg-maxwell-responds/


DISCLAIMER: I have a significant emotional investment in copyleft/viral copyright
development models, and I expect to take a lot of money charging people to write
code I give away for free. I also occasionally make money from cryptocurrency
mining, but only when I can sell it in functional and transparent markets.