Watching BitCoin go through its upheavals from very far away reminds me of what I learned with RSS.

I saw very early that as long as there was the potential for changing the format, people would hack at it, compete by being incompatible, until it was meaningless.

It looks to me like that's what's happening with BitCoin. If so, it was entirely predictable, imho.

Corporations hack at "open" standards so they can be incompatible with each other, yet still say they are open. That's how they get the lock-in they crave.

People say there were wars over RSS, but I never saw any. I saw people get mad because they couldn't rip it apart.

RSS got on solid ground, and a growing market developed. Only because evolution stopped. Which is a good thing, because the other choice was nothing.