Letter #176: Musings On “The Blocksize War”

Read now to hear my thoughts on a popular Bitcoin book that discusses the split that led to Bitcoin Cash breaking off from Bitcoin.

Dear Readers,

Today’s Letter will be a bit different than the norm. I recently finished reading “The Blocksize War” and, given its intersection with my long-time fascination with the self-sovereignty offered by Bitcoin, I felt like sharing a few of the perspectives I gleaned from the book.

The Blocksize War

For those who are unfamiliar with it, The Blocksize War was written by Jonathan Bier, a long-time participant in the space. The book covers a relatively contentious time for the Bitcoin community, when various factions lobbied for or against proposals to increase Bitcoin’s block size. A number of hard forks of Bitcoin failed before launch, but eventually the conflict did result in the creation of a copycat version of Bitcoin called “Bitcoin Cash”, an event we’ve spoken about previously.

The book covers quite a number of different developments and perspectives that came out of the community’s back and forth, as Jonathan appears to have participated in many of the major conferences held to debate the various positions and had conversations with many influential people among developer, miner, corporate, and other groups on both sides of the conflict.