Akin Fernandez, the owner of the Bitcoin startup Azteco, thinks that Bitcoin Unlimited is “100 percent anti-Bitcoin.” His comments come in the wake of the ongoing scaling impasse which has bedeviled the ecosystem.
He explains what convinced him to come to that conclusion:
"If someone came to your country and said, 'We are going to break up your government and take over the running of this country...because we have more money than all of you put together. We do not care what you want or think, just obey us, or you are free to go anywhere' you would say that that is "Anti-human" wouldn't you?"
BU will fail
However, Fernandez is quite sure the plans of those who are behind Bitcoin Unlimited will not succeed. "If Bitcoin forks, it will be unfortunate but Core supporters will win," he asserted. "Core has world-class developers in a team that is unique. It is not possible to replicate the Core team or their innovation."
Besides, he believes if Bitcoin splits, the altcoin "Bitcoin Unlimited" will have a different code base that cannot accept Core's new software and immediately they will start to diverge and fall behind in features and security.
"The ill effects have already started with Bitcoin Unlimited, who have just closed their source and are releasing binary only versions," the Software Engineer added. He strongly believes BU is now not only hiding how their client works, as auditable source helps keep their users safe but they are in violation of the open source licenses of libraries used to build their altcoin client.
Hijacking the network
Then again Fernandez thinks that not only is the altcoin Bitcoin Unlimited violating the software licenses they agreed to but they are violating the "gentleman's agreement of Bitcoin," by launching an aggressive client onto the network in an attempt to hijack it.
"He is also of the opinion that exchanges will not list BU as Bitcoin but businesses are signaling that they want nothing to do with this as he puts it, “destructive, selfish, suicidal anti-Bitcoin coup attempt” and their decision is being made easier by the bugs in BU."
"The BU dev team has taken on a very difficult task that only a handful of men on earth can handle properly and they have run into many quality control problems,” Fernandez say.
According to him, observers have poured over the last published BU source code to identify problems and rumor has it that there are critical flaws that are deliberately baked into their implementation that will make Bitcoin Unlimited unstable, unpredictable and dangerous. The Bitcoin entrepreneur thinks BU is a disaster waiting to happen on every level.
Wasteful but useful
On the whole cul-de-sac, Fernandez's view is that it is wasteful, stressful and painful but they serve a useful purpose.
He states:
"Anti-Bitcoin saboteurs are exposed, liars are identified and the steady hands that give consistent good advice, rigorously tested software and solid stewardship are appreciated."
Subsequently, he praised Bitcoin Core and said without their exemplary work, Bitcoin would have been a disaster. He declares:
"It's also clear that a great deal of patience and software innovation is going to be required in the coming years from the companies relied on the reference client and clients that imp lint e to protocol. There is a lot of very risky hard work to be done and shenanigans like Bitcoin Unlimited are unproductive."