The Blocksize War wasn’t a grassroots victory. It was Jihan Wu vs everyone else.
He fought SegWit to protect ASICBoost, tried to bully consensus with hashpower, launched Bitcoin Cash when he didn’t get his way — and lost. Not because the arguments beat him, but because the economics eventually did.
He bet against fee pressure, bet on bigger blocks, and thought miners should dictate the protocol. Turns out the real power came from exchanges and infrastructure — the economic layer that refused to follow him off the cliff.
So when Jonathan Bier says “the users won,” he should’ve added a giant fucking asterisk:
*Users = Bitfinex, Coinbase, Kraken, major wallet providers, and infrastructure operators. Not your uncle’s Raspberry Pi node.
It wasn’t node count. It wasn’t Reddit sentiment.
It was the fact that economically significant nodes aligned with small-block Core, and miners followed the money.
The grassroots didn’t win. They got lucky that the economic layer agreed with them. Some revisionist history will be required once “users” learn this truth the hard way as the current drama unfolds.
nevent1qqs94mtcxsskx7vx4jvgtnl0d7zugcenexy62smlq666s908786xz4cpr3mhxue69uhkvet9v3ejumn0wd68ytnzv9hxgtmpw4jxjmcnhhcnh
EricFJ / Eric FJ
npub10x…2g437
2025-05-13 19:52:58
Author Public Key
npub10xvczstpwsljy7gqd2cselvrh5e6mlerep09m8gff87avru0ryqsg2g437Published at
2025-05-13 19:52:58Event JSON
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"content": "The Blocksize War wasn’t a grassroots victory. It was Jihan Wu vs everyone else.\nHe fought SegWit to protect ASICBoost, tried to bully consensus with hashpower, launched Bitcoin Cash when he didn’t get his way — and lost. Not because the arguments beat him, but because the economics eventually did.\n\nHe bet against fee pressure, bet on bigger blocks, and thought miners should dictate the protocol. Turns out the real power came from exchanges and infrastructure — the economic layer that refused to follow him off the cliff.\n\nSo when Jonathan Bier says “the users won,” he should’ve added a giant fucking asterisk:\n\n*Users = Bitfinex, Coinbase, Kraken, major wallet providers, and infrastructure operators. Not your uncle’s Raspberry Pi node.\n\nIt wasn’t node count. It wasn’t Reddit sentiment.\nIt was the fact that economically significant nodes aligned with small-block Core, and miners followed the money.\n\nThe grassroots didn’t win. They got lucky that the economic layer agreed with them. Some revisionist history will be required once “users” learn this truth the hard way as the current drama unfolds.\nnevent1qqs94mtcxsskx7vx4jvgtnl0d7zugcenexy62smlq666s908786xz4cpr3mhxue69uhkvet9v3ejumn0wd68ytnzv9hxgtmpw4jxjmcnhhcnh",
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