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Here's the stickiest thing about this entire thing to me: the name. Roger Ver (one of the people behind bcash) has said repeatedly that he believes that his fo

by blhack 9y ago

Here's the stickiest thing about this entire thing to me: the name. Roger Ver (one of the people behind bcash) has said repeatedly that he believes that his fork deserves the name "Bitcoin" and that it is the "real" bitcoin. It seems obvious that the intent here is to confuse people. This, to me, seems like blatant fraud. It is concerning to me that coinbase would continue to allow this market confusion to build by listing this under the name "bitcoin cash". Things like this make me long for better regulation in this space. Full disclosure: I say this as somebody who holds both bitcoin and bcash in nearly equal amounts. I mean to say that I don't really have a dog in this fight.

kbwt 9y ago
He's not entirely wrong though. What defines the real Bitcoin: The network's hash rate? The developers behind the Qt wallet? Adoption/usage?
- blhack 9y ago
  What defines anything? You could spend a lifetime on this problem. Bitcoin has a continuity in price, in name, in code, in software, all the way back to when people first started talking about it in 2009. The idea that bcash is and always has been bitcoin is betrayed by the simple fact that there isn't a continuity in price back to the genesis.
  - kbwt 9y ago
    And that continuity can split and move back-and-forth between forks, as they gain or lose support. The sum of XBT+BCH price on exchanges fluctuated less than either coin alone.
    - blhack 9y ago
      Are you trying to say that the price of bitcoin crashed from ~$3000 to ~$300 immediately on August 1st 2017, and that coincidentally at the same time, a brand new asset appeared that had the same price that bitcoin did a few seconds earlier? That's just absolutely absurd.
      - Alex3917 9y ago
        > That's just absolutely absurd. If you run a website and your database gets pwned by hackers, do you just give up and say oh well, I guess the pwned version is the real version now? No, you restore from a backup, and if that involves recreating some of your integrations with third-party providers then so be it.
        chii 9y ago
        except that it's not hackers, but somebody else claiming to own the website.
      - kbwt 9y ago
        It split into ~$2700 plus ~$300. Not sure what the exact numbers were, but there was a clear pattern of one falling as the other rose, and same thing the other way around.
Alex3917 9y ago
Bitcoin Cash is the real Bitcoin. They should just change the forked version to BCore or BStream, so as not to confuse people.
- mancerayder 9y ago
  Bitcoin Classic, like an original product that was brought back due to marketing creating demand.
  - inferiorhuman 9y ago
    Original Recipe Bitcoin
- tr4cefl0w 9y ago
  I said it before and I’ll say it again, block size increase alone is not sustainable. The BCash boyz are stubborn and in denial. Might work for now but in the long term they will need another fork to increase the block size again and so on. They don’t have a Lightning Network either which is already available on Bitcoin Testnet and proved to be extremely fast (almost instant) at very low cost. I hold both but I’m realistic. I only hold BCash because I know the price is being pumped so I’ll make some money with it.
  - blhack 9y ago
    And bcash isn't even living up to its claims right now. People are trying to move their coins out of storage onto exchanges, and seeing about an hour before they even get 1 confirmation.
    - makomk 9y ago
      It looks like the actual block size limit that most miners are using on Bitcoin Cash right now is 2MB, which isn't so much of an increase from Bitcoin at all. (The odd ones out are BTC.com with a 4MB limit and ViaBTC which has the full 8.) The new Cash difficulty algorithm also has an unfortunate tendency to oscillate when there's a sudden change in price relative to Bitcoin's price. Also, Bitcoin Cash supporters have a habit of... well, frankly, outright lying sometimes. They were still pushing the idea it was faster than Bitcoin back when it was running at hours per block most of the time, and the usual response to people who discovered this was to tell them that the block time varied and was as low as a minute per block. This was technically true - in fact, often an equal number of blocks were produced at the minutes per block and hours per block rate, in alternating 144 block chunks of each. Can you perhaps see the problem here?
ohstopitu 9y ago
I have neither, Why can't he call his fork Bitcoin Cash? He claims that it adheres to the Bitcoin.org idea than BTC. Him & a vocal community (/r/btc) appears to believe in that. What gives BTC (and /r/bitcoin) the right to the name Bitcoin considering both are forks from the original chain?
- wolco 9y ago
  You can create a fork today but should you be allowed to take the bitcoin name? Leave the name with the existing entity.
  - takeda 9y ago
    The point is that Bitcoin Core is as much of a fork as Bitcoin Cash. You're mixing up soft fork with a hard fork and implying that soft fork is somewhat better, when in reality it is just technical concept and has nothing to do with it. Actually in current situation we already have example, the soft fork (SegWit) implements a complex mechanism to add segregation witness feature and allow for off-chain transactions. The change in Bitcoin Cash is simply raising the block limit to 8MB. In fact initially bitcoin had no limit for the block size and the limit was added to prevent DDoS. That limit was meant to be increased as there would be higher demand.
    - xorcist 9y ago
      That is not true. Initially Bitcoin crashed when blocks went over a couple of hundred kilobyes. Satoshi put in this hard cap when this inadvertent limit was fixed.
- erikb 9y ago
  One is the fork and the other is the original. By not taking the Bitcoin name the Bitcoin Cash group has already admitted that they are the fork. They should be proud about it and give themselves a new name that stands for their ideals. That said I personally don't believe that the name will make a difference in this battle.
throwaway_98554 9y ago
Which one is closest to the original design?
- twayamznacct 9y ago
  Probably the one that isn't owned by two wealthy elite individuals...
asciimo 9y ago
I think you're being disingenuous. "bcash" has become a derogatory term and your use of it belies your bias. Do you also rail against Bitcoin Gold, BitcoinDark, Bitcoin Plus, eBitcoin, BitcoinZ, Bitcoin Red, Bitcoin Scrypt...? Or only the one that threatens Bitcoin's HODL culture?
- MertsA 9y ago
  I think it's worth pointing out that "bcash" was something coined by the bcash community. The only notable opposition to it was by Roger Ver because he wanted his fork to have the name "Bitcoin" in it. I don't think it helps anything to accuse the poster of being disingenuous for using a term that the community themselves came up with.
  - Kiro 9y ago
    What? That's absolutely not the case. You're spreading a complete lie.
    - theprotocol 9y ago
      You're right. We are witnessing some serious fanaticism here. It's kind of disgusting.
    - MertsA 9y ago
      To clarify, I was referring to /r/btc where I lurk from time to time. There were plenty of people bikeshedding over the name but Roger Ver is the only notable public figure who has thrown a temper tantrum over the name. Just because now everyone wants to claim that "BCash" is a propagation campaign just because Roger is hysterical over it doesn't mean that BCash wasn't coined in /r/btc back over the summer.
      - taysic 9y ago
        No one in /r/btc or the Bitcoin Cash community calls it 'bcash'. Totally disingenuous.
SilasX 9y ago
It's really an open question which one is the "real" Bitcoin and merits having "Bitcoin" in the name. It's like saying that the People's Front of Judea is fraudulent because they don't really represent Judeans like the Judean People's Front.
- cesarb 9y ago
  One possible way to distinguish between both would be continuity: if you had a Bitcoin node running several months before the announcement, and kept running the same unchanged software until today, which one would your node be following now? That one probably has a bigger claim to both being the "real" Bitcoin, and having the plain unadorned "Bitcoin" name. As to whether it merits having "Bitcoin" in the name, both are close enough that one could be considered a small variant of the other. That might be enough for the other one to merit being called "Bitcoin something".
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
partiallypro 9y ago
To me it seems like Bitcoin Cash profits greatly just from having the word "Bitcoin" in front of it. Surprised no one just copyrights it and sues other coin makers. I guess that's against he community, but imo it needs to be done. I don't hold any bitcoin or bitcoin cash...I say this as just a general consumer. The "bitcoin" name has brand value, and having "bitcoin" cash is going to inflate the market value of the it and confuse consumers into thinking some coins are more trustworthy. Especially as this goes more mainstream and your Aunt and Grandma can buy BCH on Coinbase. Or whatever new altcoin comes up that tags on the words "bitcoin."
- taysic 9y ago
  Not really. There's Bitcoin Gold, Bitcoin Diamond, Bitcoin Ruby, Bitcoin Plus... the list goes on and on but the 'Bitcoin' name hasn't helped any of them much.
  - blhack 9y ago
    "Bitcoin gold" is currently the #10 largest cryptocurrency.
    - taysic 9y ago
      #10 doesn't mean much because the liquidity and popularity drop off exponentially after the top 4.
tompetry 9y ago
It's not Coinbase's job to come up with the name and symbol for coins.
lurr 9y ago
It deserves the name because it has devs actually interested in turning it into the original vision of bitcoin. Vs a store of value that just racks up transaction fees.
empath75 9y ago
I've said this before -- but this fork should have broken the illusion that people had that bitcoins are rare. If viable forks are possible, then they will continue to happen, each of them increasing the number of 'bitcoins' in circulation.
- blueprint 9y ago
  Good thing it's not viable then...?
- taysic 9y ago
  Each fork will need to serve a niche to get attention. That's still a high bar to set. A number of forks have been created that have next to no value or interest.
- dwaltrip 9y ago
  You are extrapolating from a single fork that had a lot of specific circumstances behind it. If you were right, we would have seen many successful copycat forks since then, but we haven't.
touchofevil 9y ago
It seems like one of the disadvantages of Satoshi being anonymous is that Bitcoin wasn't trademarked, which allows for forks like Bitcoin Cash to use the name Bitcoin. I think this is kind of an interesting case of why trademarks are important as having both Bitcoin and Bitcoin Cash must be very confusing to new users on Coinbase.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- tzakrajs 9y ago
  At least when governments fork Bitcoin and force people and financial organizations to use it instead of other digital currencies, they can still call it Bitcoin legally.
peterjlee 9y ago
I think of cryptocurrency as a wild wild west of high risk investing (aka gambling). Companies like Coinbase is in the business of selling you wagons and oxen so you can participate if you wish. I think the real problem is that this became a gold rush, so too many people who don't know what they're doing are participating.

by blhack 9y ago

kbwt 9y ago

He's not entirely wrong though. What defines the real Bitcoin: The network's hash rate? The developers behind the Qt wallet? Adoption/usage?

blhack 9y ago
What defines anything? You could spend a lifetime on this problem. Bitcoin has a continuity in price, in name, in code, in software, all the way back to when people first started talking about it in 2009. The idea that bcash is and always has been bitcoin is betrayed by the simple fact that there isn't a continuity in price back to the genesis.
- kbwt 9y ago
  And that continuity can split and move back-and-forth between forks, as they gain or lose support. The sum of XBT+BCH price on exchanges fluctuated less than either coin alone.
  - blhack 9y ago
    Are you trying to say that the price of bitcoin crashed from ~$3000 to ~$300 immediately on August 1st 2017, and that coincidentally at the same time, a brand new asset appeared that had the same price that bitcoin did a few seconds earlier? That's just absolutely absurd.
    - Alex3917 9y ago
      > That's just absolutely absurd. If you run a website and your database gets pwned by hackers, do you just give up and say oh well, I guess the pwned version is the real version now? No, you restore from a backup, and if that involves recreating some of your integrations with third-party providers then so be it.
      - chii 9y ago
        except that it's not hackers, but somebody else claiming to own the website.
    - kbwt 9y ago
      It split into ~$2700 plus ~$300. Not sure what the exact numbers were, but there was a clear pattern of one falling as the other rose, and same thing the other way around.

Alex3917 9y ago

Bitcoin Cash is the real Bitcoin. They should just change the forked version to BCore or BStream, so as not to confuse people.

mancerayder 9y ago
Bitcoin Classic, like an original product that was brought back due to marketing creating demand.
- inferiorhuman 9y ago
  Original Recipe Bitcoin
tr4cefl0w 9y ago
I said it before and I’ll say it again, block size increase alone is not sustainable. The BCash boyz are stubborn and in denial. Might work for now but in the long term they will need another fork to increase the block size again and so on. They don’t have a Lightning Network either which is already available on Bitcoin Testnet and proved to be extremely fast (almost instant) at very low cost. I hold both but I’m realistic. I only hold BCash because I know the price is being pumped so I’ll make some money with it.
- blhack 9y ago
  And bcash isn't even living up to its claims right now. People are trying to move their coins out of storage onto exchanges, and seeing about an hour before they even get 1 confirmation.
  - makomk 9y ago
    It looks like the actual block size limit that most miners are using on Bitcoin Cash right now is 2MB, which isn't so much of an increase from Bitcoin at all. (The odd ones out are BTC.com with a 4MB limit and ViaBTC which has the full 8.) The new Cash difficulty algorithm also has an unfortunate tendency to oscillate when there's a sudden change in price relative to Bitcoin's price. Also, Bitcoin Cash supporters have a habit of... well, frankly, outright lying sometimes. They were still pushing the idea it was faster than Bitcoin back when it was running at hours per block most of the time, and the usual response to people who discovered this was to tell them that the block time varied and was as low as a minute per block. This was technically true - in fact, often an equal number of blocks were produced at the minutes per block and hours per block rate, in alternating 144 block chunks of each. Can you perhaps see the problem here?

ohstopitu 9y ago

I have neither, Why can't he call his fork Bitcoin Cash? He claims that it adheres to the Bitcoin.org idea than BTC. Him & a vocal community (/r/btc) appears to believe in that. What gives BTC (and /r/bitcoin) the right to the name Bitcoin considering both are forks from the original chain?

wolco 9y ago
You can create a fork today but should you be allowed to take the bitcoin name? Leave the name with the existing entity.
- takeda 9y ago
  The point is that Bitcoin Core is as much of a fork as Bitcoin Cash. You're mixing up soft fork with a hard fork and implying that soft fork is somewhat better, when in reality it is just technical concept and has nothing to do with it. Actually in current situation we already have example, the soft fork (SegWit) implements a complex mechanism to add segregation witness feature and allow for off-chain transactions. The change in Bitcoin Cash is simply raising the block limit to 8MB. In fact initially bitcoin had no limit for the block size and the limit was added to prevent DDoS. That limit was meant to be increased as there would be higher demand.
  - xorcist 9y ago
    That is not true. Initially Bitcoin crashed when blocks went over a couple of hundred kilobyes. Satoshi put in this hard cap when this inadvertent limit was fixed.
erikb 9y ago
One is the fork and the other is the original. By not taking the Bitcoin name the Bitcoin Cash group has already admitted that they are the fork. They should be proud about it and give themselves a new name that stands for their ideals. That said I personally don't believe that the name will make a difference in this battle.

throwaway_98554 9y ago

Which one is closest to the original design?

twayamznacct 9y ago
Probably the one that isn't owned by two wealthy elite individuals...

asciimo 9y ago

I think you're being disingenuous. "bcash" has become a derogatory term and your use of it belies your bias. Do you also rail against Bitcoin Gold, BitcoinDark, Bitcoin Plus, eBitcoin, BitcoinZ, Bitcoin Red, Bitcoin Scrypt...? Or only the one that threatens Bitcoin's HODL culture?

MertsA 9y ago
I think it's worth pointing out that "bcash" was something coined by the bcash community. The only notable opposition to it was by Roger Ver because he wanted his fork to have the name "Bitcoin" in it. I don't think it helps anything to accuse the poster of being disingenuous for using a term that the community themselves came up with.
- Kiro 9y ago
  What? That's absolutely not the case. You're spreading a complete lie.
  - theprotocol 9y ago
    You're right. We are witnessing some serious fanaticism here. It's kind of disgusting.
  - MertsA 9y ago
    To clarify, I was referring to /r/btc where I lurk from time to time. There were plenty of people bikeshedding over the name but Roger Ver is the only notable public figure who has thrown a temper tantrum over the name. Just because now everyone wants to claim that "BCash" is a propagation campaign just because Roger is hysterical over it doesn't mean that BCash wasn't coined in /r/btc back over the summer.
    - taysic 9y ago
      No one in /r/btc or the Bitcoin Cash community calls it 'bcash'. Totally disingenuous.

SilasX 9y ago

It's really an open question which one is the "real" Bitcoin and merits having "Bitcoin" in the name. It's like saying that the People's Front of Judea is fraudulent because they don't really represent Judeans like the Judean People's Front.

cesarb 9y ago
One possible way to distinguish between both would be continuity: if you had a Bitcoin node running several months before the announcement, and kept running the same unchanged software until today, which one would your node be following now? That one probably has a bigger claim to both being the "real" Bitcoin, and having the plain unadorned "Bitcoin" name. As to whether it merits having "Bitcoin" in the name, both are close enough that one could be considered a small variant of the other. That might be enough for the other one to merit being called "Bitcoin something".
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]

partiallypro 9y ago

To me it seems like Bitcoin Cash profits greatly just from having the word "Bitcoin" in front of it. Surprised no one just copyrights it and sues other coin makers. I guess that's against he community, but imo it needs to be done. I don't hold any bitcoin or bitcoin cash...I say this as just a general consumer. The "bitcoin" name has brand value, and having "bitcoin" cash is going to inflate the market value of the it and confuse consumers into thinking some coins are more trustworthy. Especially as this goes more mainstream and your Aunt and Grandma can buy BCH on Coinbase. Or whatever new altcoin comes up that tags on the words "bitcoin."

taysic 9y ago
Not really. There's Bitcoin Gold, Bitcoin Diamond, Bitcoin Ruby, Bitcoin Plus... the list goes on and on but the 'Bitcoin' name hasn't helped any of them much.
- blhack 9y ago
  "Bitcoin gold" is currently the #10 largest cryptocurrency.
  - taysic 9y ago
    #10 doesn't mean much because the liquidity and popularity drop off exponentially after the top 4.

tompetry 9y ago

It's not Coinbase's job to come up with the name and symbol for coins.

lurr 9y ago

It deserves the name because it has devs actually interested in turning it into the original vision of bitcoin. Vs a store of value that just racks up transaction fees.

empath75 9y ago

I've said this before -- but this fork should have broken the illusion that people had that bitcoins are rare. If viable forks are possible, then they will continue to happen, each of them increasing the number of 'bitcoins' in circulation.

blueprint 9y ago
Good thing it's not viable then...?
taysic 9y ago
Each fork will need to serve a niche to get attention. That's still a high bar to set. A number of forks have been created that have next to no value or interest.
dwaltrip 9y ago
You are extrapolating from a single fork that had a lot of specific circumstances behind it. If you were right, we would have seen many successful copycat forks since then, but we haven't.

touchofevil 9y ago

It seems like one of the disadvantages of Satoshi being anonymous is that Bitcoin wasn't trademarked, which allows for forks like Bitcoin Cash to use the name Bitcoin. I think this is kind of an interesting case of why trademarks are important as having both Bitcoin and Bitcoin Cash must be very confusing to new users on Coinbase.

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
tzakrajs 9y ago
At least when governments fork Bitcoin and force people and financial organizations to use it instead of other digital currencies, they can still call it Bitcoin legally.

peterjlee 9y ago

I think of cryptocurrency as a wild wild west of high risk investing (aka gambling). Companies like Coinbase is in the business of selling you wagons and oxen so you can participate if you wish. I think the real problem is that this became a gold rush, so too many people who don't know what they're doing are participating.