Bitcoin Key Developer Dumps Currency, Says It Has Failed

Mike Hearn, senior developer of Bitcoin, no longer believes in the cryptocurrency.

From a recent post on the Medium, we learned that Mike Hearn, a Bitcoin key developer dumps currency, says it has failed. In the wake of the grim announcement, the price of Bitcoin stock slumped 15 percent overnight.

The move was also a major blow for the Bitcoin community. The news stirred hot comments on dedicated forums with some people saying that they agree with the points raised by Hearn, while other people were dismissing the event from start.

The latter group was more optimistic and said that remaining developers would soon solve the problems that disappointed Hearn. BitGo, a Bitcoin security firm, criticized the developer for his ‘dramatic exit.’ The company added that the comments he made were ‘overblown.’

Other members of the industry deemed the move ‘another bump in the road’ for the cryptocurrency. But many in the crowd are just as disillusioned with the currency as Hearn is.

Steve Sokolowski, head of Prohashing, a major script mining pool for the currency, noted that the problems are as real as Hearn has said.

According to reports, Hearn dumped all his Bitcoins and moved to R3CEV, a company that tries to improve the technology behind the digital currency. Analysts explained that he was especially conflicted with the debates over the best methods to be used to boost transaction per second rates within the Bitcoin network.

The debates sometimes escalated so much that they led to death threats and cyberattacks within the network. Plus, others developers had already left including Gregory Maxwell, with whom Hearn often disagreed.

In the meantime, Bitcoin network faces new challenges as transactions and payments to miners are often being delayed because of congestion. Plus, because the traffic is high, fees are also skyrocketing and biting into the mining pool’s financial benefits.

The problems with the network are echoed by Bitcoin miners, who choose to be paid in an alternative cryptocurrency called Litecoin during periods of high traffic volumes.

Nevertheless, other people believe that these problems are not serious enough to deem the virtual currency a ‘failed experiment,’ as Hearn put it. Plus, most people now put a safe bet on Bitcoin Classic, a less aggressive version of Bitcoin XT, which was criticized by Hearn in his blog post.

Hearn was also displeased with China-based intermediary services and the people that try to take control of Bitcoin and end the dream of a decentralized currency.

Image Source: Flickr