Subject: Re: [bitcoin-dev] Bitcoin Core and hard forks

From: Jorge Timón <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 28 Jul 2015 13:29:36 +0200

On Sat, Jul 25, 2015 at 12:50 AM, Tom Harding <[email-masked]> wrote:
> On 7/24/2015 2:24 AM, Jorge Timón wrote:
>
>> Regarding "increasing the exchange rate" it would be really nice to
>> just push a button and double bitcoin's price just before the next
>> subsidy halving, but unfortunately that's something out of our control.
>
> Jorge, right now, from the activity on github, you are working at least
> as hard as anyone else, probably harder.

My level of contributions are irrelevant to this discussion. But
still, I feel I should clarify some of the metrics you are looking to.
Most of my contributions so far are code refactors (with a small
change on the command-line options and a small optimization here and
there). This type of changes is usually better done incrementally to
be less risky and disruptive (this is specially important for
consensus-related code), and that makes my total commit count
unusually high, even when some people have contributed more in new
functionality than me in a single commit.
Also code movements (often required as part of these refactors)
produce unusually high total diff counts even when they require little
less than copy and paste (once you know what you want to move and
where, of course).
If I didn't thought this work is extremely important in the long term
(among other things, to make the code more accessible to new
reviewers/developers) I wouldn't be doing it, but you can't just
compare contributions counting commits or lines changed, that's not
how it works.
Github may say that I'm #10 with 96 commits / 9,371 ++ / 8,962 --, but
it's obvious to me that, say, gmaxwell #13 with 71 commits / 807 ++ /
707 -- has done a lot more for Bitcoin Core than I have.
Even if it was true that I'm the person currently coding more for
Bitcoin Core, I wouldn't write any of that if I had no hope of getting
review, so review is certain sense much more important than coding.

> Why?  Why, if not to make
> bitcoin more valuable?

Who cares?
If my work is good for the software, my motivations are irrelevant. If
I accidentally PR a bug, my motivations are again: the bug should not
be accepted no matter how pure and noble my intentions are.
But, no, making Bitcoin's price (no offense taken, but there's an
spanish say that goes like this "Sólo un necio confunde valor y
precio" which translates to "Only a fool confuses value and price")
rise is not one of my main motivations.
I'm much more concerned about the long term success of the currency
(for which turnover is a much more interesting metric than market cap
IMO) and about learning a technology that I believe will revolutionize
the world, but maybe you don't believe me. There's a Bitcoin incentive
as part of my Blockstream's contract, so I have a financial incentive
for Bitcoin's price to increase, but, in fact, when I started
contributing to bitcoin core my bitcoin holdings where extremely low.
It bothers me that so many people seem to assume that Bitcoin
developers are also hardcore currency speculators and are also good at
it (I can say Bitcoin has teach me that I'm a terrible day-trader
myself).
There's many reasons to contribute to Bitcoin core and none of them
are relevant to this discussion.

> Even apart from the convenience/curse of real-time exchange markets,
> just with an abstract definition of "value," isn't that exactly what a
> developer can influence, if not "control?"

The fact is that there's no "bitcoin developer dance" that makes it
rain and also raises bitcoin's market price 100 usd. And suggesting
"rising the price" as a solution to any problem just cannot be
considered a serious proposal.
No, we can't just ACK a "double the price" PR when the next halving comes.

> Isn't figuring out ways to increase the value of bitcoin what we are doing?

If that's what you're doing as a currency speculator, that's fine.
It's just off-topic to this list.
And, no, that's not "what I am doing" as a software developer.
I want the system to improve, like that "Jessie J" singer said, forget
about the priceeeeeeeeee, yeah.