Jihan Wu has successfully shocked the bitcoin world once again by making a rather controversial statement. In his opinion, economic majority is irrelevant. That statement is not entirely surprising, considering how Wu supports Bitcoin Unlimited. Ignoring the economic majority is not a valid option by any means, though.
Jihan Wu Keeps Saying The Weirdest Things
If there is one thing the bitcoin scaling debate has made abundantly clear, it is how Bitcoin Unlimited fails to gain economic support. To be more precise, exchanges, wallets, and other bitcoin service providers do not see Unlimited as the official bitcoin. Instead, they might support BU as an altcoin, effectively reducing its chance of success. Then again, that was to be expected for a proposal that wants to fork bitcoin.
I don’t think economic majority is that important. I started to invest into Bitcoin in 2011 by ignoring so called “majority”.
— Jihan Wu (@JihanWu) March 29, 2017
Jihan Wu feels the economic consensus shouldn’t matter in the scaling debate. That is quite an odd statement, considering bitcoin would not be where it is today without service providers and users. Unfortunately for Bitcoin Unlimited, the majority of bitcoin users doesn’t seem to like this project by any means, and it is doubtful they will ever support it. Without the users and anyone else who is not a miner, bitcoin has very little value.
Moreover, the economic majority Wu refers to also include those who invested in bitcoin and the ones who may invest at a future date. Saying these people are not important is a slap in the face of anyone who ever purchased bitcoin. While it is true bitcoin should not just rely on investors and speculators, it should not be dominated by the opinions of just the miners either. We are all a part of bitcoin, and it would be good for people like Jihan Wu to remember that first and foremost.
It is evident Bitcoin Unlimited supported are trying to plug the holes of their sinking ship. What once started out as a promising project turned into anything but a complete joke at this point. No one values Bitcoin Unlimited at the same level as bitcoin, and very few companies are willing to even support it. While it is true BU has the support of a significant amount of miners, that support will dwindle once the additional economic incentives dry up.
Moreover, statements like these eventually undermine the total value of bitcoin as well. Alienating oneself from the vast [economic] majority of bitcoin users is not the right way to go. One would expect people like Jihan Wu to know better, yet he seems more than willing to keep saying weird things and bring the bitcoin price down as a result. Some people might even start to wonder if Wu has any idea how bitcoin works in the first place.
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