Bitcoin Community Reacts To Mike Hearn’s Recent Revelations

Bitcoin core developer Mike Hearn’s recent blog post is the latest hot topic in the bitcoin space. Hearn made several accusations and claimed that Bitcoin has failed. He said that the system has come to completely controlled by just a “handful” of people and is on the brink of technical collapse. Among other things, he also targeted Blockstream co-founder and bitcoin developer Gregory Maxwell.

In November, R3CEV, a New York City startup, announced that Hearn and four other people would lead the blockchain consortium. Hearn’s critics pointed out that the blog post felt like a veiled publicity stunt for his latest project R3CEV, CoinDesk reported.

Bram Cohen, Creator of BitTorrent, took to Medium to express his displeasure with Hearn’s views. Cohen said that Hearn’s essay was completely off base for highly technical reasons.

“I characterized Mike Hearn’s farewell essay as a ‘whiny ragequit’... He attempted a hostile takeover of Bitcoin with Bitcoin-XT, and now that he’s predictably been made to feel like persona non grata in Bitcoin development he’s throwing a tantrum on his way out”, Cohen wrote.

Bitcoin developer Peter Todd was not a bit diplomatic when he tweeted:

“The RBF section of Mike Hearn's "Leaving Bitcoin" post reminds me I'm not going to miss working with blatant liars”.

Mike Komaransky of bitcoin firm Cumberland Mining, contradicted Hearn’s opinion about the lack of consensus in the bitcoin community regarding the blocksize debate.

He tweeted, “Bitcoin Hearn Paradox- With him, consensus is hard to reach, btc suffers. w/o him, consensus is easy to reach, bitcoin prospers. he can't win”.

Nathaniel Popper in an article on the New York Times dived further into the debate and included views from Gavin Andresen and Maxwell. Popper noted that Andresen disagrees with the notion that the block size dispute will damage Bitcoin’s long-term prospects.

“Forks are part of the open-source process and had been used to make small, agreed-upon fixes to Bitcoin. But no one had tried the sort of divisive fork that Mr. Hearn and Mr. Andresen devised, largely because of the risk that it could result in two incompatible Bitcoin networks and create questions about the legitimacy and value of existing Bitcoins”, Popper wrote.

He also pointed out that the release of Bitcoin XT was not well received by Mr. van der Laan and Mr. Maxwell, as according to them decisions about the core software should be made by technical experts — not by populist campaigns.

Moreover, Popper also said that a Russian hacker responsible for conducting DDoS attacks on computers that downloaded the Bitcoin XT software, told Hearn in an online exchange that someone “payed me for killing XT”.

Popper’s article also drew criticism. Cody R.Wilson tweeted, “So Mike Hearn gets the NYT to sing him a sad little song. Aw, Mikey.”

However, several users from the bitcoin community have thanked Hearn for his contribution to the project, with many asking him to come back.

One Redditor going by the name evoorhees wrote, “Sorry to see you go, Mike. Thank you for your work and contributions over the past years. Bitcoin is always open to you.”

Another Reddit user buddhamangler wrote, “Please don't wander too far Mike. I sincerely wish you the best, and hope someday you decide to return. I think we can persevere while you pass the torch and take a break. Don't forget that even though things did not go as planned, you were an essential part of the first step and as you know all great journeys begin with a single step.”