The US government is paying attention to the debate within the bitcoin community about the block size limit, but does not intervene in it, Ed Felten, US Deputy Chief Technological Officer, has revealed on Quora.

On 11 February Bitcoin Classic version 0.11.2, the first release of the new fork, went public doubling transaction capacity of the bitcoin digital currency. It includes a change of consensus rule that increases the block size limit from 1 to 2 Mb. Bitcoin Classic was developed by Gavin Andresen and gained the support of Coinbase. On the same day, a number of key players of the bitcoin industry signed a public letter urging to abstain from embracing Andresen's version and wait until Segregated Witness is out, which is supposed to increase the block size “with minimal risk, taking the safest and most balanced route possible.”

The White House Deputy CTO Felten has confirmed his own interest in the debate:

“This is a challenge to Bitcoin’s governance model, because it requires the community to come to a consensus on an issue where there seem to be high stakes and plausible arguments on each side,” he said.

Edward W. Felten, Professor of Computer Science at Princeton University and one of the authors of the recently published bitcoin textbook, was appointed US Deputy CTO in May 2015. Before coming to the White House, he had been surveying the state of bitcoin economy for more than two years. Among his publications are studies of bitcoin mining and governmental regulation of the cryptocurrency.

Sonya Belova