Recently, bitcoin value slid back over 10% due to an interesting event, when Mike Hearn, one of the cryptocurrency’s lead developers, decided to end his involvement with the digital currency, and sell all of his current holdings.
According to him, bitcoin has failed. To put things better into perspective, Hearn was one of the five senior developers, and he has spent over five years working on the currency. The announcement was made via a blog post, over on Medium, where he also stated that: “Despite knowing that bitcoin could fail all along, the now inescapable conclusion that it has failed still saddens me greatly”.
There are various rumours trying to point out the main reason why Hearn believes that the digital currency has failed. Together with Gavin Andersen, who was chosen by Satoshi Nakamoto as his successor, Hearn has been in a constant conflict with other developers on what decision should be taken in regards to the blocksize debate. For those that do not know, the bitcoin community has been divided into two separate teams, with one of them believing that a quick and large blocksize increase should be done as soon as possible to keep bitcoin alive, whereas the other believes that a gradual, slow increase should be adopted instead. Earlier in 2015, Hearn and Andersen worked together to develop a new platform, named Bitcoin XT. The idea behind it would be to increase the blocksize to a total of 8MB, which would allow 24 transactions to be processed every second, rather than three, as the current blocksize of 1MB allows. However, the software was not adopted by many of the mining computers, which is a move that must have disappointed Hearn.
This comes as a surprise considering the fact that the Bitcoin Classic trend is quickly gaining ground. The idea behind it is to double the blocksize limit as soon as possible, and increase it later on, whenever needed, to adapt with the growth of the bitcoin ecosystem, and popularity.
Hearn’s move, which was quickly picked up by mainstream media, which failed to analyse its actual implications have encouraged a value decrease of the currency, which has gone from roughly $430 to $350 in just one day.
However, if one developer decides to quit, that doesn’t meant that the actual currency will fail. In fact, earlier on, Hearn himself stated that the currency would leave one regardless of whether the Bitcoin XT system would be adopted or not.
Based on everything that has been outlined so far, what do you personally think about Mike Hearn’s departure? Will it affect Bitcoin in any way? Let us know your thoughts in the comment section below.