BCC#10: Why am I still here?

Avatar for Cain
Written by
4 years ago

Tuesday, March 10, 2020

Why am I still here? That's the question I've been asking myself lately. Why don't I just sell my BCH and move on?

I don't know about you, but lately I've been feeling rather hopeless. About the world. About the future. About BCH. And yet I'm still here, writing this column as if anyone cares.

I admit this whole coronavirus thing has me scared. I still go to work every day like everyone else at my job. I drop the kids off at school, and come home to my wife, and on the surface, life seems normal for the most part. But just underneath the surface the fear is always lurking there, this vague notion that the world is soon going to be very different from what I'm used to.

Never in my life have I ever felt like this. Sure there were times when I worried about my own future, when I stressed out about school, or work, or my relationships, but not about the world. I suppose it's because I've been lucky. I've spent most of my life living in sunny LA, where the streets are lined with palm trees, and there's a bar on every corner. Maybe that's why it's hitting me so hard. Why I can't escape this feeling of impending doom that's crept up on me these past couple of weeks.

It doesn't help that this has all coincided with price of BCH tanking. That our community is in shambles, and our thought leaders are too busy bickering with each other instead of trying to understand one another.

And yet I'm still here, still smoking that hopium and thinking BCH is going to pull through.

Plenty of people compare Bitcoin to a religion. It's not hard to see why. Those of us who believe in this project are taking a leap of faith. Especially those of us who haven't been around since the early days and are now just playing with house money.

Right now I guess you can say my faith is being tested. It's funny because I grew up going to church, but I never truly understood the meaning of that word until now. Faith. I would literally sit there during service, not listening to the pastor and his sermon, but asking myself what faith is, and what it feels like. I would wonder what the people sitting around me felt that I didn't. Well now I know that it's wanting something so badly that you can't help but believe in it.

But this begs the question where does my faith come from? Is it because the technology of Bitcoin Cash is so amazing I know it has to succeed? Or is it because my bags are so heavy I'm unable to think straight? I don't know.

What I do know is that the technology is indeed amazing. If it wasn't, if Bitcoin Cash was just trying to be digital gold, I would have left this community a long time ago. But BCH isn't BTC. BCH isn't trying to be like some piece of rock that's been around forever, it's trying to be this totally new form of money, the best money the world has ever seen.

As our world faces what could be it's next global crisis, a potential pandemic that every human on this planet should be concerned about, I find myself thinking we need Bitcoin Cash more than ever. I'm not saying Bitcoin Cash fixes this, but what I do think is it can give us another option, a new tool that we never had at our disposal before.

To me that's what I find most appealing about BCH. Yes, being able to send any amount of money, to anyone anywhere in the world, instantly, and basically for free, is game changing, but it's being able to do it without using a third party that can revolutionize the world. The fact that it's truly peer-to-peer without the need for any middlemen.

We always talk about decentralization in the context of Bitcoin, that it's what enables us to have censorship resistant money, but what blows my mind is that Satoshi's invention has the potential to give us an entirely decentralized world. A world where we don't have to rely on the powers that be to make things happen. A world that recognizes merit, where cronyism matters less. A world that maximizes efficiency, and supply can meet demand in the smallest of markets because Bitcoin Cash takes the friction out of transacting with one another. It gives us a new way to connect with each other. I believe that BCH can bring the world closer together. Because it's not just for the rich who can afford to transact with it. BCH is for everyone. I even believe that it might help us trust one another again, and make us see that we're all in this together, because when we can all use the same money, it's almost like speaking the same language.

As the world battles coronavirus, I can't help but think we would have a much better chance if we were all working as one global community, if we knew it was up to us as individuals to do something about it rather than relying on our governments to tell us what's what.

So I guess that's why I'm still here. Because I believe that the world can be so much better than it is. I never really thought that way before. I accepted the situation as it was, I didn't bother trying to imagine how it could be any different. But now my eyes are finally open, and it's all because of Bitcoin Cash.

So what about you? Why are you here?

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4 years ago
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Comments

“To me that's what I find most appealing about BCH. Yes, being able to send any amount of money, to anyone anywhere in the world, instantly, and basically for free, is game changing, but it's being able to do it without using a third party that can revolutionize the world. The fact that it's truly peer-to-peer without the need for any middlemen.”

This is why I stick around. Global Freedom and a level playing field.

$ 0.25
4 years ago

Woww!I just finished a long reply in that video. Anyway, I totally agree the "face" of this break up is good people with mostly good intentions. The anti-BCH forces behind the scenes and use social engineering to craft the arguments.i think good people have fallen for their slick deceptions.

$ 0.00
4 years ago

Good candor, thanks. It can really help to get out of a bubble where you have, or need to have, faith, particularly in one specific project (that is easily copied by dozens of competitors). Have more confidence in the concept and its need than in a ticker and number that may go up or down.

$ 0.25
4 years ago

@read.cash Why "probably not original content"? I trust @Cain to write original content.

$ 0.35
4 years ago

False positive, fixing it and upgrading copy-paste detector to avoid such problems.

EDIT: Fixed and upgraded.

$ 0.32
4 years ago

With time we'll see more and more inflation - govts taking money from regular people in form of inflation to finance stuff: political races, reliefs for stock market, pension funds, bail-outs, bail-ins, etc... etc... etc... Which is basically stealing from regular people. There's only one opt-out - cryptocurrencies. People just haven't fully figured it out yet. That's why we're here, both to help people figure out and to opt-out (at least in some small part) from this inflation-based financial scheme.

$ 0.50
4 years ago

Why am I still here?

We seem to be on the same journey. Walking that path seems a lot harder recently, given all the IFP drama. It is easy to feel disappointed by a certain lack of appreciation and foresight, maybe even more so by the bickering and the hostile tone of some individuals. If (as Vin Armani said) BCH is the protestant church, the community loves to argue and more splits may occur. However, nobody wants that to happen and I do hope that despite the ideological differences, we can still unite behind the same cause.

Most of the drama is just happening on RTT (reddit, twitter, telegram). It does not matter to eatBCH accepting food donations, it does not matter to the new BCH house opening in Ghana, it does not matter to anyone in the world relying on BCH to make or accept payments. Adoption is speeding up and in a few short months all this drama can be history. In the best case it will be seen as a test that has sharpened BCH's vision, maybe awakened the community to become more fully engaged.

The mission hasn't changed. The idea of p2p cash for the world is as powerful as ever. Satoshi mentioned the bank bailouts. Amaury's spark was the Cyprus financial crisis. The world's financial system seems ever less balanced, and more crises are a certainty. The true promise of Bitcoin lives on in BCH.

Among the noise, I enjoy listening to the voices of clear-thinking, warm-hearted and funny individuals. People like Tyler Smith, Eleonore Blanc, C. Edward Kelso, Josh Ellithorpe, Jonald Fyookball, Chris Troutner, Anthony Zegers, Jajaa, Corentin Mercier, Akane Yokoo, ... everyone working on the technical and adoption front with talent and passion. Onward and upward.

$ 0.85
4 years ago

Most of the drama is just happening on RTT (reddit, twitter, telegram). It does not matter to eatBCH accepting food donations, it does not matter to the new BCH house opening in Ghana, it does not matter to anyone in the world relying on BCH to make or accept payments.

I wish this were true. BCH is being successfully attacked and the community divided over an attempt by miners to set up automated fair donation system intended to support BCH development. The current donations-implementation is flawed, but, many of the anti-funding forces care more about division and slowing our development than finding a better path. The anti-BCH forces behind this effort to divide us appear likely to do real damage to BCH. That kind of damage may not leave the users you mention unaffected.

$ 0.00
4 years ago

Thanks for replying. I agree, that division is sad to observe. I don't like the label "anti BCH" so much, because to me it still seems that the people involved are on board with p2p cash. Setting some anti ABC rhetoric aside, here's another way to interpret the situation: some prioritize making rapid headway with the technical roadmap, some prioritize the protocol and decentralization with no third parties anywhere. Both sides have a point. Maybe it's also a bit of realism vs idealism. I myself would like to see rapid headway made on the technical front, but as Jonald said on Collin's show, the main bottleneck for now seems to be adoption. I hope that we still have time. Adoption is not linear. I also hope that come May there will be less fighting and more building and marketing. If we make it together until June, I can see great things coming.

$ 1.00
4 years ago

I just finished a long reply to that video. I can post a copy here if requested, lol. Anyway, I totally agree the "face" of this break up is good people with mostly good intentions. The anti-BCH forces I refer to work behind the scenes and use social engineering to craft the arguments that have split the community. My belief is that good people have fallen for their slick deceptions.

Adoption will remain a bottleneck until we fix the protocol so BCH can scale for massive worldwide adoption. The arguments that 'BCH is currently small and we can work on scaling later on if we need to' are social engineering arguments used to delay us. The same ones Core used to "delay" BTC (forever, it seems). We should not try to "go viral" until we can handle the load. We can't, so I hope we do not run into that "wall". We need to fix scaling first.

BCHN seems to be trying to take control of BCH like BSV tried. This time they have good people as they learned valuable lessons from the BSV failure. If they get control, I doubt the good people will really have the ability to do a better job than ABC. I think their funding will come with strings that are intended to destroy BCH. I hope I am mistaken.

$ 0.00
4 years ago

some prioritize making rapid headway with the technical roadmap, some prioritize the protocol and decentralization with no third parties anywhere.

I think this isn't the choice here.

Through the BCHN project, I will prioritize "making rapid headway with the technical roadmap", but without changing the economic incentives.

IMO, the rather antagonistic approach by ABC to community help has, if anything, held the project back more than helped it.

If "decentralization" is what will put us back on the fast and right track, I'll embrace decentralization.

$ 0.50
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4 years ago