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Recent weeks saw yet another scandal connected with the Bitcoin Foundation. Factom founder Peter Kirby and CTO of CoinFox Nikolay Kolesnikov think that the scandals around Foundation will not affect the development of bitcoin technology.

As CoinFox reported earlier, Bitcoin Foundation board member Olivier Jannsens claims that the Foundation is close to bankruptcy. The Bitcoin Foundation dismissed his statement, while MIT Media Lab head Joe Ito suggested creating a new community group as an alternative to the Foundation.

Some people in the community are worried about the future development of the Bitcoin Core, which at present is run by the Bitcoin Foundation. CoinFox asked two managers – Factom founder Peter Kirby and CoinFox’s CTO Nikolay Kolesnikov – about the future of the Bitcoin Foundation and separate blockchains that may be developed by independent groups.

Bitcoin Core development

Both Kirby and Kolesnikov agree that the future of bitcoin depends on the development of the Bitcoin Core. Peter Kirby believes that the development of this technology will continue:  

“Our project has been tremendously informed by the work of the Bitcoin Core. Not only the code base, but the ethos and implementation. I remember seeing a reddit post from [key developer] Gavin Anderson saying essentially ‘I’m here no matter what.’ So I’m not too worried”.

Nikolay Kolesnikov has a similar view of the bitcoin core and believes in the future of the Bitcoin Foundation as an organization if not necessarily a factor in regulation:

“Our work is literally based on the bitcoin core, so it is a very important thing to us, and I firmly believe that the Bitcoin Foundation or another community will continue to support and develop the Bitcoin Core. Just as W3C supports standards for the world-wide web, the Bitcoin Foundation must maintain and develop bitcoin standards”

Bitcoin Core versus separate blockchains?

CoinFox asked both managers whether they believe in the development of “independent blockchains” by groups that do not depend on the Bitcoin Foundation. Peter Kirby says that he firmly believes in independent blockchains:

“I am sure that that lots of people will follow the lead of Factom and build layers on top of the Blockchain just like the internet is built in layers (TCP/IP + HTTP + HTML5, etc.). This gives us a much more compelling reason to continue to grow and expand bitcoin”.

Nikolay Kolesnikov thinks that should the Bitcoin Foundation collapse, it would not mean the end of bitcoin:

“We would see a lot of new projects based on previous developments made by the Bitcoin Foundation and on their ideas, since many financial companies have discovered new advantages that bitcoin technology brings, such as fast, simple, and secure payments”.

CoinFox’s CTO, however, does not agree with Peter Kirby on the development of separate blockchains:

“I don’t think that will we see an explosion of ‘separate blockchains’ (like Colored Coins) in the next few years, because bitcoin still has a regulation problem around the world and legislators still don’t have a uniform understanding of how to regulate bitcoins. In spite of this, the regulation problem is temporary and will be solved in 3-5 years”.

CoinFox is a bitcoin news project based in Estonia that joins the creative powers of a multinational group of enthusiasts with the expertise and skills of experienced professionals working in the European market. Currently, the CoinFox team is developing a mobile app that will allow users to trade and carry out other operations with bitcoins. The beta release is planned for the second quarter of 2015.

Factom is a data layer built on the bitcoin blockchain to record and securely store data using the blockchain technology. It can be used for financial record-keeping by businesses and for a wide range of other purposes like medical records, voting systems, property titles, and legal applications. The beta release of the Factom network is planned for the second quarter of 2015.