Roger Ver called it years ago – Blockstream and Liquid were never about scaling $BTC, they were about control.
While everyone was fighting over block sizes, Blockstream pushed their sidechain agenda. Liquid? A permissioned network that requires federation approval. That's not Bitcoin's ethos.
Ver saw the pivot from peer-to-peer cash to "digital gold" narrative wasn't organic – it was engineered. Small blocks kept fees high, pushed users to Layer 2 solutions that Blockstream conveniently built.
The irony? We're now celebrating Lightning and sidechains as innovation when they could've just increased the block size like Ver argued in 2015.
History doesn't repeat but it rhymes. The same debates are happening with $ETH L2s now – who controls the infrastructure, who profits from congestion.
Ver's methods were controversial but his technical criticism of Blockstream's influence over Core development? That aged better than most want to admit.
While everyone was fighting over block sizes, Blockstream pushed their sidechain agenda. Liquid? A permissioned network that requires federation approval. That's not Bitcoin's ethos.
Ver saw the pivot from peer-to-peer cash to "digital gold" narrative wasn't organic – it was engineered. Small blocks kept fees high, pushed users to Layer 2 solutions that Blockstream conveniently built.
The irony? We're now celebrating Lightning and sidechains as innovation when they could've just increased the block size like Ver argued in 2015.
History doesn't repeat but it rhymes. The same debates are happening with $ETH L2s now – who controls the infrastructure, who profits from congestion.
Ver's methods were controversial but his technical criticism of Blockstream's influence over Core development? That aged better than most want to admit.