They aren't. The Digital Currency Inititive (DCI) != MIT. Rather, it's a separate entity that's effectively paying MIT for use of the MIT name and administrative infrastructure; we do not know who is actually funding DCI.
"Together, we’ve raised $900,000. Donors include companies (BitFury, Bitmain, Chain, Circle and Nasdaq) and individuals (Jim Breyer, Jim Pallotta, Jeff Tarrant, Reid Hoffman and Fred Wilson)...while the funds will be limited to support Bitcoin protocol development, the donors do not have any influence over the developers."
That said, I believe that list is incomplete.
https://www.media.mit.edu/research/highlights/media-lab-digi...
It's clearly part of MIT's infrastructure. What you're saying is that the money is not coming directly from MIT.
Some claim it, but like that guy pretending to be Bitcoin's creator. They fail to prove it. People opposing politically adjusting Bitcoin rules have proved that they own Bitcoin. http://bitcoinocracy.com/arguments/if-non-core-hard-fork-win...
> That takes time. It's not a quick enough solution for an urgent problem.
Wallets have already had half a year to catch up already, and you say it's urgent. You think a completely incompatible, forced, and highly controversial change that virtually all the engineers working on the system say is very risky would be faster? Besides, a few large producers of transactions upgrading would make room for others.
If we could vote in some other way to prove our funds outside of this site I will be glad to take part.
Here he is advocating for increasing the blocksize limit to 8MB as soon as possible: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1238605.msg12897706#...
And here's his post announcing the launch of the service: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1133634
The site allows anyone to propose statements which all Bitcoin holders can then support or oppose by signing messages with their coins. The anti-small-block question wasn't written by the site owner, but is currently the most supported statement on the site.
> you never even care to ask about that
Honestly, I don't know where that would be public information to know to ask about it.
> to own not much (to zero) Bitcoins;
That is not the case. Most people who have been very vocal pushing for larger blocks have significant Bitcoin investments.
> segwit which roughly doubles block transaction capacity
This only happens if all wallets adopt it, which makes them write/fix their wallet software upstream. That takes time. It's not a quick enough solution for an urgent problem.
Last, if you're taking money from someone there is a conflict of interest there.
"It's hard to get a man to understand something if his job depends on him not understanding it" - Upton Sinclair
Large investors usually want something back for their investments. Maybe you don't know what that is right now, but it's legitimate for regular users to be weary of it.