Where the panel landed
The panel largely agreed that Bitcoin Unlimited’s bounty program did not make the big-block approach safer or more credible. Gabriel Divine treated the flex-size idea as interesting in a test environment but risky on mainnet, while Tone Vays argued that bounty-driven development would attract the wrong incentives and weaker developers. On India, the panel was more constructive, with Gabriel, Tone, and Theo all seeing cultural gold preference, tech talent, and currency distrust as favorable conditions for Bitcoin adoption.
What they were watching
The directional consensus was that Bitcoin remained fundamentally strong, but the market was still waiting for frustrated speculators to leave before a cleaner move could form. Tone discussed a possible slow return toward the old “about 1000” high, followed by a move to “2 to 2.5 K” over the next 12 to 18 months, with the usual pullback afterward. Banking stress in Europe was framed as potentially constructive for Bitcoin, but only if panic did not become broad economic destruction.
Bitcoin Unlimited Adds Bounties
The panel opened with Roger Ver’s Bitcoin Unlimited team offering several hundred thousand dollars in grants for scaling work. Thomas framed the obvious answer as Segregated Witness followed by cautious block-size growth, while Theo converted the question into a plea for Rare Pepe transaction capacity.
Fork Risk And User Choice
Gabriel found the general idea of user-selected block sizes intellectually interesting but dangerous on mainnet. He highlighted Bitcoin Unlimited’s own language about tracking non-trivial forks, arguing that a system likely to create short-term forks was too risky for Bitcoin’s live economy.
Bounties And Developer Incentives
Tone opposed the bounty model because he believed Bitcoin’s strongest developers were already working on Core and motivated by the project rather than a quick payout. He warned that cash incentives could attract altcoin-style developers who wanted to get code merged, get paid, and move on.
India As A Bitcoin Market
The panel saw India as one of Bitcoin’s strongest emerging-country prospects. Gabriel emphasized distrust of banks, gold culture, and technical talent, while Tone and Theo pointed to gold controls, jewelry premiums, and smartphone access as reasons Bitcoin could find practical demand.
Next Country To Catch Bitcoin Fever
Asked to name the next country after India, Gabriel chose South Korea, largely through gaming and token culture. Tone and Theo both leaned toward Vietnam, citing weak currency trust, cash culture, and early local Bitcoin organizing.
OneCoin And Professionalized Scams
The FCA warning about OneCoin gave the panel a chance to distinguish Bitcoin from organized multi-level-marketing crypto fraud. Tone called OneCoin too obvious to be an interesting scam for Bitcoiners, while Thomas noted that its victims were outside the normal Bitcoin audience and therefore harder to warn.
Scam Coins And Last Man Standing
The panel broadened OneCoin into a discussion of Paycoin, LeoCoin, PonziCoin, Steemit, Ethereum, and the larger incentive structure of speculative tokens. Gabriel argued that the crypto game was a long process of scams coming and going until users learned to ask why they should use anything instead of Bitcoin.
Deutsche Bank And Systemic Stress
The Deutsche Bank segment moved from immediate trading to long-term systemic risk. Gabriel saw no short-term direct Bitcoin correlation, while Tone argued that Deutsche Bank and the euro remained deeply vulnerable, with European banking stress eventually creating conditions favorable to Bitcoin and the US dollar.
The Rare Pay Pay Revolution continues.— Theo Goodman
In other words, allowing users to set their own block size automatically creates hard forks that they have to track in the software.— Gabriel Divine
I want my developers to program it because they believe in this idea not for the paycheck.— Tone Vays
We need bigger blocks now.— Theo Goodman
One coin is supposed to be a coin for the everyday person to make money.— Theo Goodman
Speculation is a dangerous period where you can really really as we see take advantage of the naive in these crowdsayles ICOs initial crypto offerings so so much scam— Gabriel Divine
Story of the Week
Bitcoin Unlimited Meets Conservative Engineering
The dominant story was Roger Ver’s Bitcoin Unlimited bounty program and the continuing dispute over how Bitcoin should scale. The panel did not reject research into bigger or flexible blocks, but it sharply rejected the idea of casually running hard-fork-prone software on a live network carrying billions in value. Gabriel’s reading of the Bitcoin Unlimited FAQ became the institutional center of the segment: the project admitted forks could happen and assumed miner economics would resolve them. Tone’s critique was less technical and more cultural, warning that Bitcoin’s advantage came from developers who believed in the project rather than contributors chasing a check.
Bitcoin is meant to be attacked. Bitcoin is designed to be attacked.— Gabriel Divine