After a welcome dinner last night, the secretive event Satoshi Roundtable kicked off this morning, sources tell the Bitcoin.com News team. The meeting represents a controversial two-day private affair featuring Bitcoin community members invited by ‘Blockchain Economic Advisor’ Bruce Fenton, who has shrouded the event in mystery.
Mysterious Background and Controversy
“All bags with Satoshi Roundtable paperwork were rerouted and held in another city in America for 24 hours before release. Coincidence?” tweeted the Roundtable founder Mr. Fenton after the 2015 event. Perpetuating the notion that documents from the 1st annual Satoshi Roundtable were inspected by federal authorities certainly adds an air of importance to an event some of the biggest names in the Bitcoin industry have attended.
Chatham House Rules and Exclusivity
Discussion at Satoshi Roundtable abides by the courtly “Chatham House Rule”, wherein participants are free to use the information received, but neither the identity nor the affiliation of the speaker(s), nor that of any other participant, may be revealed. Chatham House originated among UK statesmen in the early-to-mid twentieth century. Invitees over the meeting’s three-year history include Tally Capital's Andrew Flipowski, Decentral founder Anthony Di Lorio, Overstock CEO Patrick Byrne, and Bitcoin.com CEO Roger Ver.
Crashing Satoshi Roundtable
Chris Derose and Joshua Unseth, Bitcoin Uncensored hosts, crashed Satoshi Roundtable 2016. They were made aware of the event by nearly 10% of those in attendance. “Through various channels, seven or so people told us where the event was and asked us to please come,” wrote Unseth. Derose recalls the 2016 event as “the Bruce Fenton experience, whereby Mr. Fenton attempted to create an air of access that he was facilitating that wasn't accessible to others. He invites scammers, and people with nothing to contribute to Bitcoin, and many of whom are in some ways financially eviscerating digital currency newcomers.”
Executives Weigh In
Bitpay CEO Stephen Pair tweeted: “…the #SatoshiRoundtable was a very productive waste of time … @brucefenton deserves a lot of credit for organizing it”. He expounded on Medium, noting much discussion dealt with the block size debate. “The most important thing I learned at the event was that a lot of people care a lot about Bitcoin and these people are what make Bitcoin work, not lines of code or software.”
Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong posted on the Coinbase Blog: “A number of meetings took place between core developers, miners, and CEOs of Bitcoin companies.” He expressed concerns about systemic risk if Bitcoin Core was the only team working on Bitcoin: “Some of them show very poor communication skills or a lack of maturity — this has hurt bitcoin’s ability to bring new protocol developers into the space… They prefer ‘perfect’ solutions to ‘good enough’.”
Open-Source Divide
Gavin Andresen recalled key moments: when asked who supported the “Hong Kong compromise” (segregated witness in April, then code for a 2MB hard fork in July of 2016 with a minimum of a year before 2MB blocks are allowed), only a dozen or so people raised their hands; the remaining forty or fifty people voted against. This exposed deep community splits. Jeff Garzik, Bitcoin developer and CEO of Bloq.com, believes private meetings can be productive but participants need to commit to a culture of transparency. “Private meetings sometimes move specific issues forward, but ultimately it comes to a public forum for a decision.”