Big Bubbler's Bitcoin Cash (Bitcoin) World View as of September 2020

So far Bitcoin Cash (BCH) is the only "Bitcoin" project still seriously working to become decentralized (unstoppable) peer-to-peer electronic cash for the world's people. Since that was the intent of the original Bitcoin project, BCH is really the only project still working to achieve the dream of Bitcoin. Other projects do pretend they are still real Bitcoin projects, but they are all broken in at least one way so they cannot fulfill the Bitcoin dream. Of course, the others all have people claiming their project is still working to become or has already become a real Bitcoin. They do this to keep people's belief in their coin's value up. The monetary value of any cryptocurrency (or Government backed currency ("fiat") or, to a lesser extent, Gold, Diamonds, etc.) is determined by belief. Actual value influences people's beliefs, but, it is what people think something is worth that matters most.

 Bitcoin Believers

Bitcoin started out in 2009 with few believers. Over time the idea of Bitcoin was shared with an ever growing audience and belief in Bitcoin's potential grew. There was only one real Bitcoin project in the early years. Most everyone believed in the same project and more and more people started to believe it could really fulfill the dream and change the world. Some people cared more about the potential to disrupt entrenched financial systems and/or protect privacy, but most new believers seemed to just want their holdings to grow in monetary value. Because the token's monetary value is based on what people believe it is worth and people know this, there was an incentive to all believe in a rising value as a team to cause that to be true.

 The natural "organic" growth in value due to a growing community of believers was happening. I believe ultra-wealthy speculators saw the potential around 2012 and started repeatedly pumping the price up and then letting it free-fall to always higher "low" points. The "lows" may show the growth of organic belief. The growing peaks in value attracted international attention, more organic growth and more speculation. I think many of the speculators were also becoming true believers. In 2017 the "pump" to 20,000 USD per Bitcoin showed BTC-Bitcoin was near it's newly self-imposed upper limit of Transactions per day (see below). I assume the massive price manipulators (pumpers) knew they could not go much higher and it appears they may have stopped their cyclical efforts to quickly pump BTC-Bitcoin to massive new highs now that this "upside-limit" has been reached.

 BTC's Capture and corruption

Back before 2012 Bitcoin was seen as a possible threat to entrenched financial interests. It seems they were OK with Bitcoin so long as it did not get massively adopted by the people of the world as peer-to-peer electronic cash. They had infiltrated and captured control of  the original Bitcoin project by 2016. Others can explain the detailed timing and methods if you want more info on how it happened. Here is my summary article about it: https://read.cash/@Big-Bubbler/the-troll-army-still-cant-stop-magic-internet-money-c5ad0453  Anyway, they were able to take centralized control of development and break Bitcoin's ability to scale (grow to a much larger number of transactions per day).

 Along the way, the real Bitcoin community was fooled by a massive and very professional social engineering effort (on all related social media) into thinking the majority was a minority of the community. A few heroes managed to fork the Bitcoin code (creating what's now known as Bitcoin Cash) and save the dream of Bitcoin from the attacker's death grip. Sadly, the social engineering attacks were so successful at fooling people into thinking the captured Bitcoin was not really captured and was still on track to fulfill the dream, their team was able to take all the adoption the Bitcoin community had spent years building up as well as the "Bitcoin (BTC)" name from the real Bitcoin community.

 Current BTC House-of-cards

The massive social engineering and massive price manipulation are still working together to keep people fooled as I write this. If they did not, I believe BTC-Bitcoin would collapse down to a few thousand dollars each. BTC-Bitcoin does have practical value, but, it can't become a real Bitcoin unless it's new owners change their goals and set it free again. There is no reason to think that will ever happen (if it is even possible).

 When BCH forked off, it became the new real threat to the entrenched financial interests. I believe they continue to use price manipulation, BTC, social engineering and many other tools to try to keep BCH from becoming peer-to-peer electronic cash for the world's people. The anti-Bitcoin and now anti-BitcoinCash army of disinformation agents (I call the "troll army") works all day, every day on all related social media to try to make BTC look like the real "Bitcoin" it is no longer even trying to become.

 The future of "Bitcoin"

If the attackers do not corrupt or destroy BCH first, it is on track to take over where BTC reached it's limit and stalled in 2017. Bitcoin Cash can grow much bigger. In coin value terms, I estimate BCH can grow to over $200,000 (USD) when belief grows. It already has that ability. In my estimation BTC will have a very hard time going over $25,000 unless it grows slowly to higher values. BCH can't yet fully scale for massive worldwide adoption to become peer-to-peer electronic cash for the world's people. When it can scale (and only then), I believe adoption will go viral when a triggering event occurs. That sudden massive adoption growth by the people and businesses of the world would make BCH into a real "Bitcoin" as originally envisioned (and could push BCH to a value over $2,000,000USD each).

 Attempting to fund BCH development with an IFP begins

BCH's lead developer team (ABC) tells us they need more funding to achieve that critical full-sized scaling goal anytime soon. I believe we need to get scaling soon or we may miss the window of opportunity to garner most of the world's p2p-cash market-share. Avoiding further delay seems very important to me.

 Some of the miners have been big contributors to funding development. To increase funding some miners requested ABC create an infrastructure development fund (IFP) from a percentage of the block rewards (the miners have earned) so miners could fairly donate to development based on their level of profit. This would allow the miners that support the developers to get donations from all BCH miners so they would not have to continue to carry the load alone. In what appears to be a fortuitous twist, the math works out so the IFP causes some miner hash to move to the BTC chain and then the BCH mining difficulty adjusts and the loss to BCH miners is much smaller than the donated amount. Since BTC is much more valuable at this time, BTC miners end up paying for most of the BCH development fund (due to a small amount of increased mining competition).

 When the anti-Bitcoin forces and the BTC miners heard BCH might be funding our developers in a more serious way and it might cost BTC miners income, a massive social engineering attack on BCH began in earnest. They started by demonizing the IFP to stop the funding. The anti-BCH troll army ramped up their false logic attacks on social media to a level I had not seen for years. The arguments seem to be designed by very smart professional social engineering teams to sound very believable even when they were not based on facts. They successfully blocked the first attempt to improve developer funding with an IFP.

 Amaury gives up on his social media efforts?

The original IFP roll-out and the first attempt to code it into the ABC node software were poorly implemented leaving many unknowns. The social engineers were able to fool the community into thinking the unknowns would certainly lead to the worst possible interpretation of the ambiguity. Amaury and the ABC team failed to provide the certainty needed to keep this from happening. They basically went silent and allowed the "troll army" room to do their worst.

 I don't know if Amaury was fed up with all the social media attacks, had stress from Covid-19, had financial troubles making it hard for him to spend time on BCH without getting paid properly and/or some other potentially valid "excuses", but he seemed to be letting the dishonest community manipulations do their worst while putting out sub-par IFP-related work product. He seemed to almost stop caring what the social media "community" claimed to have as concerns. The IFP was blocked by what appeared to be a coalition of anti-BCH-trolls and many real pro-BCH community members who, I believe fell for the anti-BCH/anti-Bitcoin agents sophisticated web of dishonesty mixed with truth. As I said, Amaury basically helped the attack succeed at recruiting pro-BCH community members.

 Blood in the water

After this, it seemed like the social engineering teams that have been attacking BCH since before BCH existed smelled blood in the water and went after ABC and Amuary directly to try to divide our primary developer team from BCH. They hit pay-dirt when they started demonizing ABC and Amaury Sechet (the ABC lead developer). It turns out there were many who were happy to become enraged at Amaury for various reasons and the Anti-BCH army was able to recruit many to their anti-Amaury coalition.

 A new savior?

The protest movement spawned a new node developer team (BCHN) led by an anonymous but well known developer. It seems to be funded by mostly dark money and put out a very professionally written position paper that said all the perfect things (so perfect it suggested the social-engineering-team writers to me). They sound so good I want to believe in the promises of this new team myself. Although I believe BCHN was inspired by the anti-BCH forces that now champion BCHN, I do not know if the anti-BCH forces actually had a hand in the creation of BCHN. By this time, many important developers and community members have taken stands against any IFP funding attempts by ABC.

 ABC consolidates it's already too-strong powers

A new ABC plan to fund BCH development with an IFP is currently under way. They just dictatorially announced the ABC node would have it without further discussion. They have promised transparency and added a "Global Network Council framework" (GNC) to let Miners and BCH "holders" distribute 50% of the funding in what I would call a strange and interesting way that may be good. Having a great opportunity to release the funding-distribution power, ABC missed their chance to make this GNC neutral. They put themselves in charge of the distribution framework and they kept unfettered control of half the miner's donations for the "reference node" team. It is the miner's money getting donated and if this is what they want, I guess we will find out by November. I have a feeling powerful mining interests that intend to support ABC were involved in crafting the GNC. It seems there may be a way to take the funding from ABC by another node team becoming the most commonly run node (and thus the "reference client"). The competition for this position could be great or a problem for BCH. It is never boring here, lol.

The "appearance of impropriety" is strong with the creation of this funding and ABC's decision to retain so much control over it. I still think it is most likely that ABC has good intentions and will do the best they can to use the funding to make BCH better faster. I still consider the very common 'this much power will corrupt ABC into wasting or stealing the funds' -type claims by opponents to be some of the many unjustified and dishonest fabrications used to divide the community. That said, ABC is becoming too powerful and could abuse that power with ease if they chose to. I still have high hopes for our benevolent dictator's ability to make BCH into a real Bitcoin if given real funding to hire top-end professional developers.

The Troll Army's captured community moves to "Fire" ABC.

With Amaury's help, the anti-funding movement has used dishonesty and legitimate grievances to become very strong. They seem intent to block this funding attempt as well by "forking" BCH. A fork is probably very bad for BCH and was probably a dream of the anti-BCH social engineering agents that have been behind the anti-funding and community-division efforts for months. It has been suggested the new and untested team that would like to claim control of the BCH "reference client" position (BCHN) may be unqualified for the task unless the current team continues to do the work for them to copy. I hope that is not true as I hope their team becomes a valued alternative node helping decentralize the BCH-development ecosystem. If BCH splits into two forks it will increase centralization (at least in the short term) of both forks and divide our already small community.

 The troll army tells their team BCHN is supported by almost all of the community and 53% of BCH miners so far. BCHN fans promise BCHN will win any fork battle and retain the Bitcoin Cash name and BCH ticker. BCHN has said they do not intend to create a fork, but that stance seems unlikely to hold up unless they have most of the mining-hash-power on their side. Social media where the troll-army is active is full of anti-ABC and pro-splitting social engineering posts. Few dare to say anything good or neutral about ABC on social media these days and it makes it look like the BCHN fans are the majority.

 Amaury and ABC have said they will have the IFP to fund the development of BCH no matter the opposition. It is a strong stance that suggests they have miner backing for keeping their fork alive after any fork that might take place. Whether they have enough backing to win the battle for the "Bitcoin Cash" name is an unknown. The two sides appear to be entrenched and set for an epic break-up of BCH in November.

 My theory on November 15th

If ABC has the most mining hash BCHN may need to change their code to force themselves off the BCH blockchain if they want to continue to test the purely-voluntary funding model we have had for 3 years under new leadership. Or, they could alter their code to add the IFP (unlikely) to remain part of ABC's BCH.

 If BCHN has the most mining hash, I think ABC will fork off and test their miner-funded development strategy with a new coin name. Or, remove the IFP (unlikely) to remain part of BCH. If there is a split, both sides will claim to be the real BCH regardless of the outcome. Owners of one coin will get an equal amount of the other coin for free and if we are lucky, both BCH's will eventually succeed and fulfill the Bitcoin Dream.

 Because the BCHN team was inspired by (and may be funded by) the anti-BCH troll army that is attacking our primary developer team, I sure hope the ABC chain lives long enough to at least allow BCHN time to prove their ability and trustworthiness. It is a slim possibility that the BCHN project is another anti-Bitcoin infiltration attack on BCH. If so, it was so well done it really did fool a lot of smart and well-intentioned BCH fans.

 Because BCHN is all about not letting ABC have the IFP funding and their supporters have made this an adversarial and divisive battle, I wonder if ABC will look for a way to control the use of their IFP funded work-product to keep the "free riders" who do not support their development from benefiting from their hard-fought efforts. I would not blame them for wanting to, but that would be antithetical to the BCH ethos and may not be smart to attempt.

 Choosing Sides, Not.

Because I think BCHN may be an attack on BCH and because I do not accept the troll army's claims that ABC is evil and has bad intentions towards BCH, many think I am a big ABC and Amaury fan just out to harm BCHN's legitimate claim to take over control of BCH. This is not true. I remain a BCH fan. I have always seen myself as an "anti-troll" on social media. Most of my disagreements on social media center around pointing out the dishonesty of arguments. This is what I have been doing for years now. It seems to me that because most of the active social media accounts on r/BTC now want/claim to believe the dishonest arguments, my efforts there have cost me thousands of Karma points in the last two months. Luckily I have enough to last a while longer before the new moderation policy there blocks my posts.

 I may be fooled by social engineering on this, but I do believe the claims that Amaury has been difficult to work with. I am not happy about how much power over development decisions he has. I do not think BCH should continue to be ruled by a benevolent dictator (especially in the long run). I think BCH could be better served by leadership that is more friendly towards new developers. My problem is that all I see is a protest movement against a bunch of things that the troll-army has suddenly weaponized even though they have all been legitimate concerns for years. What we need is solutions to the various concerns and this fork plan may not solve any of them except replacing Amaury with a new (anonymous) dictator who promises to share power and provide everything everyone wants to hear. It sounds so perfect it throws flags up for me, but I do want it to be true. I hope it is true and BCHN goes on to make a great BCH.

 I am not thrilled with the way it is happening, but an ABC coin with an IFP funding development and a benevolent dictator at the helm may be the most effective way to move a BCH forward quickly. I do not assume ABC developers will steal the funding and stop working on BCH (as the troll army promises every day). I assume they will do their best to see to it BCH becomes a real Bitcoin ASAP. Luckily the GNC it is not a BCH governance council (as many will pretend), it is just a funding-disbursement decision-maker for the new IFP funding. I think ABC's power can be curbed over time and hope the/a community comes together to work on that and other issues that can be optimized.

 To me the most important goal for BCH is to solve scaling. If there is a split, both teams are expected to work on solving that issue. I regret the division of talent, but assuming they both really want to create a real "Bitcoin" for the people of the world, I think both teams have advantages in the race to find a solution. I think the team that figures it out first will have an advantage when bringing it to the market and may be able to get a jump on the viral growth it can allow. Of course the applications built on top of any scalable coin will make or break the viral growth potential and BCH does need to work on more user friendly and accident-resistant applications. If there is a split, the BCHN team will have a big early-advantage with major wallet developers and the SLP token developers claiming they will not support the IFP-coin. It seems ABC would have a lot of competing priorities for things to spend the IFP funding on.

 A fork could be terrible, but If both teams really want to make BCH great, I think the competition could benefit both of them and all the believers in the Bitcoin dream of sufficiently decentralized (un-stoppable) peer-to-peer electronic cash for the world's people. After all, two BCH's are harder to stop than one and if they split the market share, they have cut the scaling problem in half :-).