|
Tone Vays has worked on Wall Street for more than 10 years and has worked for JPMorgan Chase. He is also a Bitcoin enthusiast. He is the research director of bravenewcoin and an expert in blockchain. In the interview, he shared his views on segregated verification, ETH and Trump. Bitcoinist: You mentioned in your blog that Segregated Witness (SegWit) is the future of Bitcoin. Why is the activation of SegWit so important? Tone Vays (TV): Segregated verification is important because the developers of the segregated verification code are extremely smart financial engineers who understand the real needs of Bitcoin, such as privacy, anti-censorship, fungibility, etc. At the same time, the developers did not force the community to execute the code, but ensured that 95% of users voluntarily deployed segregated verification. The transaction malleability problem solved by Segregated Verification can improve production capacity and is even more important than directly increasing the block size. The problem is that it is becoming increasingly difficult to improve the Bitcoin system because as investors and users increase, no matter how small the improvement is, it will cause controversy. If Segregated Verification cannot pass, then other proposals will also be unable to proceed.
Bitcoinist: Is this a do-or-die moment for Bitcoin? TV: I think the activation of Segwit is inevitable. It is not a life-or-death decision for Bitcoin. As long as there are no changes to the Bitcoin protocol, it is unstoppable. Maybe someone will be happy to pay $100 in transaction fees and wait a week, as long as Bitcoin cross-border payments meet the needs of users for censorship resistance. Opposing Segwit on the grounds of rising transaction fees is absolutely missing the point.
Bitcoinist: What are you most worried about regarding Bitcoin Unlimited (BU)? Is it possible for the community to deploy both Core and BU at the same time? TV: They have very few developers. I don’t mean technical developers, but ideological ones. I never believed Roger Ver’s conspiracy theories. Mike Hearn and Gavin Andresen’s views on privacy and censorship resistance are definitely different from Core’s. I guess this is the main reason why they left Core. The greatest job of the Core team is to review hundreds of lines of code to prevent malicious deployment. Over the past five years, this team (especially their current leader Adam Back) has won my trust. The technology we are facing is not like self-driving cars, where you can trust your life to companies like Google. We are facing a P2P trustless currency, which means that trust is as important as the technology itself, otherwise it will cause financial panic. I don’t agree with deploying two solutions, and Satoshi Nakamoto also thinks so, because it is difficult to reach a consensus. Or choose to create a competing currency such as ETH. Having said that, I have prepared popcorn and can watch another unexpected fork of ETH switching from PoW to PoS at any time. In 2010, Satoshi Nakamoto said: 'I don't think the second layer compatible deployment scheme is good for Bitcoin. Bitcoin's basic architectural design is destined that all nodes must maintain a high degree of consistency. The second deployment scheme will only bring panic to the network.'
Bitcoinist: You have been critical of ETH since The DAO. The price of Ethereum has recently reached its lowest level in 9 months. Does this mean that ETH is about to decline? Will smart contracts based on the Bitcoin blockchain steal the limelight from ETH? TV: To be fair, I was not bullish on ETH long before The DAO. They pre-sold 60 million ether (investors would not see the movement of this money for a year) and used 11 million of it for pre-mining and then distributed it to insiders. This behavior to me was contrary to securities laws and consumer protection laws because they had no way of guaranteeing that they would not "abscond with the money" and leave investors in trouble. At the same time, I have doubts about the necessity of "decentralized" smart contracts. Ignoring the Turing completeness for a moment (which is also the reason why DAO failed), suppose there are dedicated smart contract systems, and you can create smart contracts by paying the developers of these systems (who can ensure the stability of the contract system). If developers can directly protect privacy through cryptography, then why must the contract be decentralized? Decentralization is inefficient, Bitcoin is a classic example, you need to consume a lot of electricity (miners) to ensure its security. But we need this feature because censorship resistance is the ultimate goal.
Bitcoinist: Do you think Trump's presidency will have a positive impact on Bitcoin? Especially since he has appointed Bitcoin enthusiast Peter Thiel as an advisor. Are Trump's protectionist policies good for Bitcoin? TV: I don’t know much about Thiel’s work on Bitcoin and blockchain. I haven’t read his book, so I don’t know if he really understands Bitcoin. We all know what happened to Paypal (Paypal was acquired by eBay, and Thiel resigned as CEO), and I don’t want to see Bitcoin suffer the same fate. As for Trump, his tax cut plan is good for the US economy, but not necessarily for Bitcoin. I don’t think Trump’s protection policy is relevant to Bitcoin because it has no impact on the virtual world. However, if Trump insists on cracking down on drugs, it may promote the application of Bitcoin in this regard.
Bitcoinist: In addition to Bitcoin, are there other cryptocurrency projects that you are optimistic about? Why? TV: If it is related to 'decentralization', the answer is no. I am only interested in Bitcoin and hope that it can be expanded through segregated verification. People always underestimate the power of monetary tools on the Internet. And we must use this tool to build efficient, secure and private applications. As early as 1999, Milton Friedman (economist) has already regarded this tool as an important force to counter government power.
Bitcoinist: The instability of the global economy is reflected in India's demonetization policy, Brexit, Italy's constitutional referendum, etc. What important events can make people turn to Bitcoin and other currencies that are truly under their own control? TV: The answer is simple and it is in your question. Before the Greek banks closed in the summer of 2015, I predicted that the collapse of the Euro would be the main reason for the rise of Bitcoin. The abolition of the 100 and 500 Euro notes is likely to be the second reason. Even without the demonetization of India, the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA) and the Foreign Bank and Financial Account Reporting (FBAR) regulations in the US Anti-Money Laundering Act can be the reason for us to choose Bitcoin. The more the government cracks down, the faster Bitcoin will develop... This is why I like Bitcoin!
| 
