BTCC COO Samson Mow has emerged as a vocal critic of the Bitcoin Classic project. He was recently interviewed by Rob Mitchell on The Bitcoin Game. BTCC publicly supports the Bitcoin Core development team regarding the evolution of the Bitcoin protocol. Both Mow and CEO Bobby Lee participated in a Hong Kong meeting that effectively blocked miners from switching from Bitcoin Core to Bitcoin Classic to activate a hard fork to raise the block size limit to 2 MB.
During his appearance on The Bitcoin Game, Samson Mow outlined why BTCC supports Bitcoin Core and explained his perspective on the development team and the broader community debate.
Bitcoin Core Knows What It’s Doing
Mow emphasized that the Bitcoin Core developers have been making sensible, careful decisions to keep Bitcoin functioning. He praised their work fixing bugs and addressing security concerns, arguing there is little reason not to support them. As he put it, supporting the Core team is “a real no-brainer.”
Mow also addressed claims common on forums like the /r/btc subreddit that Blockstream controls Bitcoin Core. He disputed that notion, noting that “The Core team is a very big team; it’s not Blockstream. It’s a lot of companies and a lot of individuals.”
While acknowledging that Bitcoin Classic developer Gavin Andresen played a crucial role in Bitcoin’s early development, Mow said Andresen has passed the leadership on to others. He explained that the people now building and extending Bitcoin have deep knowledge of the codebase and may even be better positioned to guide its current development because they have written much of the new code.
Andresen still retains commit access to the project’s GitHub repository and can contribute. Since Wladimir J. van der Laan became lead maintainer, the Bitcoin Core development process has moved toward a more consensus-based approach. Previously, when Gavin Andresen served as lead maintainer, he had final say on contentious matters—a model similar to how Satoshi Nakamoto guided the project in Bitcoin’s earliest days.
Bitcoin Core Is Not a Company
Mow pushed back against portraying Bitcoin Core as a centralized company. He described the project as a loose collaboration of individuals and organizations rather than a corporate entity with customers and a marketing department. “A lot of people have this perception that the Core team is almost like a company and they have to respond to their customers,” he said, noting that many of those terms originate from critics like the Classic team. In reality, Bitcoin Core contributors are volunteers and professionals who build free software used by others.
Mow emphasized that Core lacks a marketing arm or customer support team and that users of the software are not customers in a commercial sense. The software is free, and the contributors work together without appearing as a single corporate unit.
Mow’s Views on the Core Team Have Evolved
Mow acknowledged that his own perspective on the Core project has changed. He used to be frustrated by what he perceived as limited communication from the Core developers until a lengthy conversation with Blockstream President Adam Back helped him understand their approach better. Since then, Mow says communication from Core has improved, and he suggested the debates sparked by projects like Bitcoin XT and Bitcoin Classic helped drive that change.
For now, Mow believes the community should let the Core contributors focus on development. He warned that prolonged public debates and drama divert developers’ time and slow progress. “I think what we need to do is give the Core team time to write the code,” he said, urging patience so developers can concentrate on building and maintaining the network.