Why Bitcoin Cash Is Not Bitcoin [BTC vs. BCH – Differences …

The crypto-sphere is heating up and simultaneously becoming more confusing as it evolves.

I am sad to see how the viruses of confusion and myth are purposely injected into the ecosystem and how the whole system is manipulated as well as hijacked on a regular basis.

Specifically, I am talking about the recent insane price spike of Bitcoin Cash and the doomed price fall of Bitcoin in just a matter of hours.

Some of you who are old players of the crypto-sphere must have benefitted from this sudden rise and fall, but I think its not good for newcomers, and its not healthyfor Bitcoin in the long term.

Thats why in this write-up I wish to convey some of my thoughts on how Bitcoin Cash is not Bitcoin. And I also want to clarify why the newcomers should not fall prey to the Bitcoin Cash PR campaign.

For the latecomers, I want to first explain what Bitcoin Cash is and show you some facts. Then, Ill explain Bitcoin and leave it to you to decide for yourself.

Bitcoin Cash is a Bitcoin fork which was created this year on the 1st of August by a minority group of influential miners, developers, investors, and users who were against the agreed consensus of SegWit implementation to scale Bitcoin.

Namely, there are three main players in the Bitcoin Cash community Roger Ver, Jihan Wu, andDeadal Nix.

They decided to fork the original Bitcoin blockchain and create a new version called Bitcoin Cash (aka BCH) with an adjustable block size up to8 MB blocks.

Some of the benefits & features of Bitcoin Cash

This on-chain increase in the ability of Bitcoin Cash provides several benefits to its users against Bitcoin, but these benefits come at a huge price that its users have to pay. (I will explain this huge price further in the article.)

Some more benefits

For more details, read our extensive guide on Bitcoin Cash:

Ignoring the fact that many of you would have made a good amount of money in the recent Bitcoin Cash rally, one needs to pay a huge cost for using Bitcoin Cash.

This cost cannot be measured in dollars, euros, or yens, but instead, it is a cost that you pay by compromising the original dream of Satoshi Nakamoto to make an uncensorablealternative monetary system which isnt controlled by an individual or a group of people.

Some of you might say that I am incorrect because Bitcoin Cashs official site claims that they are carrying forward Satoshis Vision by stating:

Some of the developers {of couse the Bitcoin Core Devs} did not understand and agree with the original vision of peer-to-peer electronic cash that Satoshi Nakamoto had created.

And

Bitcoin Cash is the continuation of the Bitcoin project as peer-to-peer digital cash.

https://www.bitcoincash.org/

But actually speaking, they are not even close to Satoshis originalvision of decentralized and uncensored money.

Bitcoin Cash is extremely censored.

Wait! Some of you might say that I am biased and I am just a Bitcoin fan, but I have facts!

1. A decentralized cryptocurrency having a CEO? Really?!?!

Do you really need a CEO for a currency? If you do, then whats the difference between a business and a crypto?

Check this out https://www.bitcoincash.org/letter-from-the-ceo.pdf

An official statement from the CEO of #Bitcoin Cash: how we resolve conflicts in our community, our values, and our development of leaders and people https://t.co/BaNupOmh2m

Rick Falkvinge (@Falkvinge) November 12, 2017

Archive of @Falkvinge "Official Statement" procaliming himself CEO of $BCH in incoherent/confusing post (now taken down https://t.co/IzBiFYCXZI) available here: https://t.co/PefMk1JsH6. Very creepy and immature rambling, hallmark of $BCH poor leadership $BCH BUYERS MUST READ pic.twitter.com/HIDdbaoaxU

Francis Pouliot (@francispouliot_) November 12, 2017

2. Centralized mining

Bitcoin Cash mining is highly centralized. If you look at the above image, you will certainly be able to put in perspective what I am talking about.

This is the hash power distribution for Bitcoin Cash mining for the last 144 blocks mined.

If we combine the hash power of Antpool, ViaBTC, and BTC.com, which makes more than 50% hash power, this is detrimental for any coin. To make a 51% attack on Bitcoin Cash would be a decision of three mining parties coming together.

Forgot to mention. BCH is a lot more miner centralized. Because its network hashrate is a lot less than BTC, a small BTC pool can 51% attack it. So it's security is weak because of that. Litecoin doesn't have this problem because Litecoin dominates Scrypt hashing.

Charlie Lee [LTC] (@SatoshiLite) November 12, 2017

The argument is that Bitcoin also had such hashrate distribution in its early days; but dont forget that Bitcoin was trading in pennies at that time. Anyone attacking BTC at that time had no incentive in doing so because it was almost worthless.

But now that Bitcoin Cash is trading well above $1000, its very susceptible to 51% attacks, which is not good. Read more about 51% attacks here.

3. Total full nodes are fewer than Bitcoin

Bitcoin has more than 10,000 active full nodes running, which is one of the most important factors of a truly decentralized currency. This means that anyone attacking Bitcoin would need to have the ability to hijack more than 50% of the 10,000 nodes that are running across the globe.

On the other hand, Bitcoin Cash only has around 1200 nodes as per Coin.Dances node summary.

4. Hard forks without polls

Who does hard forks or upgrades in the currency protocols without polls?

Well,Bitcoin Cash does.

Bitcoin Cash had their hard fork (or protocol upgrade) on 13th November 2017.

The upgrade/fork was done to change the underlying mining algorithm to make it more competitive against Bitcoin and to prevent it from miners abuse in the event of reduced or increased difficulty. Read more about the Bitcoin Cash fork here.

Well, I am not against Bitcoin Cash changing something and trying to be competitive, but they should not try being competitive in this way by doing things without polling the community.

If something is getting upgraded in the protocol, then it has to happen with proper polling and agreements. But this official write-up shows that they didnt have any such polls.

Also, this write-up gives a hint that there is actually no need for polling because their community is so small and censored. In reality, there are only three individuals who made the decision. (Their names arent there but everyone knows who these three were Roger Ver, Jihan Wu, andDeadal Nix.)

You can see how easy it is to upgrade Bitcoin Cash. Their community is comprised of 3 people. They are the miners, the developers, and the users. Funny!!

Bitcoin is the DADDY of cryptocurrencies. Some of the facts that make Bitcoin truly decentralized and much better than Bitcoin Cash are:

I know that some of you might be thinking that I am a huge Bitcoin fan and thats why I am biased towards Bitcoin Cash, but I want you to make one thing clear: I am not really that biased.

I certainly think that Bitcoin Cash has a future, but if it is trying to be Bitcoin and continue down this same path that its on now, its not going to end well.

If you are a Bitcoin Cash fan, then you should try to convince the community that BCH is BCH it cant be Bitcoin. And if Bitcoin Cash continues to be an altcoin and not attack Bitcoin, then I dont think there are any problems.

Even Andreas suggested this to both communities.

Bitcoin and Bitcoin Cash will coexist and serve different use cases, just like Bitcoin and Ethereum. Its not a zero sum game. Work on building your project, not on destroying the other

Andreas (@aantonop) November 12, 2017

On the other hand, I am not naive or ignorant about current challenges that Bitcoin is facing in terms of scalability (despite SegWit implementation).

I am also aware that a huge number of Bitcoin txs are stuck in the mempool.

But lets remember that it wasnt always so easy to send emails in the early days of the internet. Similarly, Bitcoin will scale with the much-anticipated Lightning networks or sidechains in the future. And yes, those scaling solutions need to happen soon, otherwise, there will be more drama like this for ages to come.

Also for the newcomers: Stay away fromRoger Versowned domain Bitcoin.comthat is trying spread this FUD and exclaiming that Bitcoin Cash is Bitcoin.

So thats all from my side in this article.

If you are with me and understand Bitcoins true nature, then do retweet/share this write-up with the Bitcoin community, and join hands in finding permanent solutions to Bitcoins scalability.