A little birdie leaked multiple Blockstream investor emails to me. I will not be revealing my source so do not ask. As we are all well aware many Blockstream investors are upset with the way Blockstream has been squandering away their venture capital.
I am taking snippets from the leaked emails and publishing them here. Any Blockstreamer that wants to confirm or deny the leaked email snippets is more than welcome to but I highly doubt they will and will more than likely deny these exist. It's easy to tell who wrote the emails from their obvious writing style. Also just think who is the main public facing exec at Blockstream and you know will know who. It's very easy to tell :D
Here is the first leaked email to investors which covers Q1 2017. Some interesting snippets with bolded areas by me to show important statements and claims being made by Blockstream.
Dear Blockstream Investor!
A lot of exciting things have happened since our last update and we are preparing several public announcements over the coming weeks. Below is an update on our progress:
Community Update
As background on the Bitcoin ecosystem, although none of Blockstream’s business plans are conditional on activation of Segregated Witness (“SegWit”), the “SegWit versus Bitcoin Unlimited” story remains a major conversation topic in the Bitcoin community. We agree with the overwhelming majority of technical leaders in the ecosystem who state that SegWit is not only the safer way to increase transaction capacity in the short-term, but it also includes other protocol improvements that will enable a significant amount of future innovation. There are some suggestions that the miners’ delays in activation of SegWit are economically motivated rather than technical in nature -- delays allow miners to collect artificially high fees from the strong demand for Bitcoin transactions in the short-term, and the assumption is that fees would decrease with the activation of SegWit and layer2 retail and micropayment applications, such as Lightning, which compete for fees. (Lightning fees are paid to peer-to-peer liquidity providers, and not miners).
Market Update
On March 10th, the bitcoin-based ETF proposed by Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss was rejected by the SEC. The decision was based on several factors, including concerns about the fact that bitcoin exchanges are largely unregulated, affecting the quality of the price data used to support the ETF. Reaction to the decision was mixed; however our view is that this is only a temporary blip in bitcoin’s progress. (More in this article, which includes Adam’s thoughts on the ruling.) There are other bitcoin ETF’s awaiting an SEC decision, and it is likely that new applications will be filed in the future. Many of the SEC concerns are addressed by Blockstream products and technologies, so future approval of a bitcoin ETF may be more realistic than the specific reasoning provided in the SEC decision would suggest.
In late February, the Enterprise Ethereum Alliance was announced, with large partners including Microsoft, Accenture, JP Morgan Chase, as well as other large companies and Blockchain startups. The alliance, which resembles organizations like R3 and Hyperledger, will attempt to address some of the problems encountered by businesses that want to use Ethereum for a number of different use cases. We do not view these groups as major threats to our platform because the technology they are developing is very early-stage compared to the Elements platform; however, we are focusing on making our tools easier for developers and engineers to use so that it is easier for members of these industry working groups to use our platform in some of their Proof of Concept projects.
Recent Accomplishments
Liquid: Next week, we will be inviting participants to join a live Liquid beta network. We will work with customers to integrate the Liquid service with their interface and perform live testing (real transactions but de minimis amounts initially). Once all of our customers are ready, we will launch the production version and begin planning Liquid 2.0.
Elements - Code Update: Based on our experience with using our Elements tools to create Liquid, we made significant improvements to our Elements Alpha code and published an update to our open source codebase.
Elements - New Release: We are preparing to launch a new version of Elements to add a very valuable feature. Using this new technology, we have been collaborating with a partner who is developing a new product on the Elements platform. Stay tuned for more information about this exciting release.
Lightning: We continue to make progress on our Lightning Network implementation. In our last update, we told you about our first end-to-end test of a lightning micropayment network. We also recently participated in a Lightning Network summit with representatives of all major Lightning implementations. At the meeting, significant progress was made on standardizing efforts so that all of the groups are able to collaborate together in order to accelerate development.
Company Metrics
Current Headcount: 41 Team Members
Offices: San Francisco and Mountain View
Runway: 5+ years
My comments about the snippets above -
Shows censorship is working by stomping out dissenting points of view to highlight their own
Lying to investors that SegWit is a scaling solution
Lying to investors that miners are holding back SegWit to inflate tx fees when Blockstream is the one artificially creating a fee market with a capped block size of 1MB
Most damning is the admission that with Lightning Network enabled tx fees are paid to liquidity providers (Exchanges!) and fees will be taken away from miners. This shows a clear motivation for Exchanges to use Liquid sidechains in partnership with Blockstream as part of the overall solution to reap in profits using LN.
Runway simply means thats how much investor capital they have left work with. So another 5 yrs!
Here is the second leaked email to investors which covers Q2 2017. Some interesting snippets with bolded areas by me to show important statements and claims being made by Blockstream.
Dear Blockstream Investor,
We have had a very busy Q2 and would like to give you an update on everything we have been up to over the past few months.
Community Update:
Some of our investors may be tracking the Bitcoin ecosystem scaling discussion. To recap, “SegWit” (short for Segregated Witness) upgrades a number of bitcoin features, provides at least a 2x capacity increase, and enables the high-scale Bitcoin Lightning protocol.
It appears that SegWit may finally be activated during the next few weeks, after what appears to be mostly political delays. That means that we should shortly see transaction throughput increases and an acceleration of Lightning deployment. Obviously uncertainty over this was of some concern to investors. We remain optimistic that Bitcoin can continue scaling via the adoption of a range of approaches tailored to the usage type -- we will keep you posted.
Recent Accomplishments:
Consensus 2017: In May, Blockstream sent a number of key team members to the CoinDesk Consensus conference in New York. The event proved to be a very valuable experience for us. We had multiple speaking and panel appearances, and our presentations were very well received by conference attendees. We also invited existing and potential Liquid customers to a live demo of Liquid Beta. The feedback from this demo was very positive and led to follow up press coverage. Several exchanges told us that they had been following our progress with interest, but seeing the value of the product firsthand was very important in their decision to help test the network and potentially become a customer.
Liquid: In early April we took Liquid Beta live, and have been working with multiple participants on both test transactions and moving real bitcoins between Liquid and the main Bitcoin blockchain. The feedback we received has been exceptionally helpful, allowing us to reduce the number of steps necessary for network participants to complete a two-way peg in and out of the Liquid sidechain and making it easier for our customers to send bitcoin across the Liquid network. We are pleased with our recent progress on Liquid and looking forward to adding new customers soon.
Lightning: With SegWit recently activated on Litecoin, our developer Christian Decker made the first lightning payment in a non-test environment.
Confidential Assets: In late April, we announced a new Elements feature – Confidential Assets (CA). CA builds on Confidential Transactions and allows users to put multiple assets on the same blockchain, hiding both the transaction amount and the type of asset. The first group using Confidential Assets in production is our investor and partner Digital Garage, who is including it in a loyalty point marketplace.
Company Metrics
Current Headcount: 43 Team Members
Offices: San Francisco and Mountain View
Runway: 5+ years
My comments about the snippets above -
Shows a continual focus on Liquid sidechain for Exchanges to work with Blockstream for fast transactions happening off chain in combination with Lightning Network which will be used to scale off chain taking fees away from miners and putting them in the pockets of Exchanges.
Exchanges are Blockstream's customers who pay for their services. Exchanges win with fees and being a premium service provider. Blockstream wins with paying clients, development work and so on.
(Lightning fees are paid to peer-to-peer #liquidity providers, and not miners)
I have been killing myself, trying to explain it to all, using those exact same words, and barely anyone believed me. Now it comes from the horse's mouth !!!!!!!
This is what ANYONE needs to read to see through the ABSOLUTELY DISGUSTING BLOCKSTREAM SCAM!!!
sorry, my blood pressure is a bit high at the moment, now if you excuse me, I will go make myself a tea, and lift some weights.
u/mushner
•
Nov 10, 2017, 9:05 AM
I'd also highlight this snippet:
The decision was based on several factors, including concerns about the fact that bitcoin exchanges are largely unregulated
[..]
Many of the SEC concerns are addressed by Blockstream products and technologies
It's not too much of a stretch to imagine what they might mean by that (regulated KYC/AML LN HubsTM anyone?)
u/Fount4inhead
•
Nov 10, 2017, 10:47 AM
Lightning fees are paid to peer-to-peer liquidity providers, and not miners
Fees are essential for the security of the network as blockreward dwindles, And the best way is to have high volume of low fees. Not a tiny volume of high fees + additionally taking profits away from miners to liquidity providers further reducing network security. In short this does not work, Bitcoin Cash works as Satoshi designed.
u/MoBitcoinsMoProblems
•
Nov 10, 2017, 9:37 AM
Do blockstream investors have any power?
Lets say they all realize that blockstream is doing nothing, could they pull out their money? Or could they enforce bankruptcy and just divide all money thats left among investors?
u/DaSpawn
•
Nov 10, 2017, 10:20 AM
If they just kept improving Bitcoin instead of trying to choke it to force their agenda they would have easily made boatloads of money on the 2nd layer solutions they brought to market (I was excited for them at one time too)
idiots killed their golden goose that literally fell in their lap. they have completely defrauded their investors as it was obvious this is what was going to happen as soon as they split the community years ago
you can not stop the Bitcoin honey-badger, you can only get on board or get run over
u/lcvella
•
Nov 10, 2017, 12:06 PM
Most amazing of all is how they talk like they own Bitcoin. Well, if that doesn't convince the ones who still believe Core is independent from Blockstream, nothing else can, and those people are lost cause.
u/TruthForce
•
Nov 10, 2017, 11:57 AM
Is there some email identifier you can add to this post that proves these emails are 100% legitimate and what not?
Not saying I don't believe they would do this, of course they are they admit it all the time by accident or on purpose. Just would like a good source backed up by it is all. But I also understand you may out yourself of who you are if you did that. So don't out yourself and what not.
u/BitcoinIsTehFuture
•
Nov 10, 2017, 9:39 AM
Post them in their entirety including who wrote them. Why would you omit the originator of the email?
Blockstream investor emails leaked - shows Blockstream motivation to steal transaction fees from miners and pay to Liquid sidechain customers
A little birdie leaked multiple Blockstream investor emails to me. I will not be revealing my source so do not ask. As we are all well aware many Blockstream investors are upset with the way Blockstream has been squandering away their venture capital.
I am taking snippets from the leaked emails and publishing them here. Any Blockstreamer that wants to confirm or deny the leaked email snippets is more than welcome to but I highly doubt they will and will more than likely deny these exist. It's easy to tell who wrote the emails from their obvious writing style. Also just think who is the main public facing exec at Blockstream and you know will know who. It's very easy to tell :D
Here is the first leaked email to investors which covers Q1 2017. Some interesting snippets with bolded areas by me to show important statements and claims being made by Blockstream.
My comments about the snippets above -
Here is the second leaked email to investors which covers Q2 2017. Some interesting snippets with bolded areas by me to show important statements and claims being made by Blockstream.
My comments about the snippets above -
I have been killing myself, trying to explain it to all, using those exact same words, and barely anyone believed me. Now it comes from the horse's mouth !!!!!!!
Proof:
1) /r/btc/comments/7bu5ml/know_thy_enemy/
2) /r/btc/comments/78mm6i/i_now_own_bch/
3) /r/btc/comments/77sqdt/its_a_big_winwin/
4) /r/btc/comments/765ka7/bcash_has_been_flippened/
I wish I had time and go rub that stuff in their face!
Finally: My 2 posts on Lightning Network:
a) /r/btc/comments/77xntu/lightning_network_tldr_here_are_great/
b) /r/btc/comments/781htm/lightning_network_tldr_part_2_expanded_a_how_to/
This is what ANYONE needs to read to see through the ABSOLUTELY DISGUSTING BLOCKSTREAM SCAM!!!
sorry, my blood pressure is a bit high at the moment, now if you excuse me, I will go make myself a tea, and lift some weights.
I'd also highlight this snippet:
[..]
It's not too much of a stretch to imagine what they might mean by that (regulated KYC/AML LN HubsTM anyone?)
Lightning fees are paid to peer-to-peer liquidity providers, and not miners
Fees are essential for the security of the network as blockreward dwindles, And the best way is to have high volume of low fees. Not a tiny volume of high fees + additionally taking profits away from miners to liquidity providers further reducing network security. In short this does not work, Bitcoin Cash works as Satoshi designed.
Do blockstream investors have any power?
Lets say they all realize that blockstream is doing nothing, could they pull out their money? Or could they enforce bankruptcy and just divide all money thats left among investors?
If they just kept improving Bitcoin instead of trying to choke it to force their agenda they would have easily made boatloads of money on the 2nd layer solutions they brought to market (I was excited for them at one time too)
idiots killed their golden goose that literally fell in their lap. they have completely defrauded their investors as it was obvious this is what was going to happen as soon as they split the community years ago
you can not stop the Bitcoin honey-badger, you can only get on board or get run over
Most amazing of all is how they talk like they own Bitcoin. Well, if that doesn't convince the ones who still believe Core is independent from Blockstream, nothing else can, and those people are lost cause.
Is there some email identifier you can add to this post that proves these emails are 100% legitimate and what not?
Not saying I don't believe they would do this, of course they are they admit it all the time by accident or on purpose. Just would like a good source backed up by it is all. But I also understand you may out yourself of who you are if you did that. So don't out yourself and what not.
Post them in their entirety including who wrote them. Why would you omit the originator of the email?