My thoughts on Roger's interview with Omar: Part 3

Saturday, October 3rd, 2020

In the final installment of this series, I want to compare the difference between Roger and Amaury's commitment to BCH by highlighting two things Roger states during his interview.

Exhibit A:

"Even in my own life, I've been selling a lots of different cryptocurrency options. And you can earn money from the options and you can buy other options. And so what I had been doing for a long, long time is I've been buying lots and lots of Bitcoin Cash puts, which is basically just a fancy way of saying that I'm agreeing to buy Bitcoin Cash at some specific price lower than the price today, in the future. So if Bitcoin Cash is lets' say $220 bucks today, I'm agreeing to buy Bitcoin Cash several months into the future at$200 each. In exchange for me agreeing to that, they pay me money right now for that, and I've been earning a substantial amount of money this way, and I had been taking all that and just using it to buy more Bitcoin Cash, and sell more Bitcoin Cash puts in the future, and I was buying millions of dollars of Bitcoin Cash this way, and I stopped doing that a few months ago because of the uncertainty that Amaury has caused in the market, and I switched to buying a whole bunch of Ethereum that way. And from an investor's standpoint, it's done fantastic, but from someone who is excited about peer to peer cash for the world, I think Bitcoin Cash has a better shot at doing that than any other cryptocurrency out there, but Amaury's busy rocking the boat and if the boat capsizes that's the end of it. So here I am, you know everybody knows I'm a big big Bitcoin Cash fan. I run bitcoin.com and I have plenty of money to do things with, too. I had been using that money to buy more Bitcoin Cash with the interest I had been earning on it every month, I switched to Ethereum a couple of months ago directly because of Amaury, and I'm sure I'm not the only one."

Exhibit B:

And in fact there are lots of talks amongst big Bitcoin Cash holders of just plain paying Amaury to leave Bitcoin Cash alone. That's how passionate people feel about it. It would be basically paying him an extortion fee. That's an example of would paying an extortion fee be preferable to having Amaury disrupt the platform of Bitcoin Cash that people are trying to build on? Maybe. In fact you know what I should tell that story. I reached out to Amaury about that specifically, and I asked him, how much would I have to pay you to just stop with this IFP nonsense and stop threatening doing the fork and doing that. And his initial reply, and it was in this ... there were some other people in the chat room there, I don't know maybe a dozen, and his initial reply was you have to pay me 22 million Bitcoin Cash. For those that don't know 22 million Bitcoin Cash don't exist so basically he said you have to pay me more than all the Bitcoin Cash in the world. And then I replied to him. I said see this is the exact sort of bad, sarcastic attitude that I'm complaining about that is detrimental to people wanting to build on top of Bitcoin when the lead developer has this sarcastic rude attitude towards one of the people that have really done a lot to push Bitcoin Cash forward. And then he replied, and he gave a little bit of [???] behind it, and he said he would leave Bitcoin Cash alone and stop with the IFP stuff if I paid him $200M, which I also think is a crazy amount. And it just really shows at this point he doesn't care about peer to peer cash for the world, he's just looking to get $200M, or 22 million Bitcoin or whatever.

In the first quote above, Roger is telling us how he has stopped buying BCH in favor of Ethereum due to all the uncertainty caused by the IFP. Look, I have no problem with how anyone chooses to invest their own money. It's probably a good idea to be diversified and there's nothing wrong with that. And Roger has always made it clear that he is all about supporting projects that bring economic freedom to the world and has previously touted being one of the first investors in Ripple and how he owns lots of Dash, and Zcash, and Ethereum, and that's all fine and good, but to me, what it shows is a lack of commitment to Bitcoin Cash.

Just as we question Bitcoin Unlimited's lack of commitment to BCH due to the fact that 97% of their holdings are in BTC, I think it's fair to question the commitment of someone who is publicly stating he has now stopped buying BCH in favor of Ethereum, which makes Roger sound more like a trader than a builder.

It's no secret that Roger has been supporting BCHN and even commented on their latest announcement video: "This video reignited my excitement for BCH".

Well, what he says on Reddit appears to tell a different story from what he's doing with his money. Aand what he's doing with his money tells me he isn't very confident in BCHN or any of the other anti-ABC teams.

Look I don't care how anyone chooses to spend their money. I don't care what projects someone wants to invest in or promote. But I do believe that if you want to speak on behalf of the BCH community as a key opinion leader, you shouldn't go around promoting the competition, or even worse, promoting scammy projects like HEX while telling those of us who are 100% committed to BCH what we should or shouldn't be doing.

Now let's compare Roger's attitude to that of Amaury's.

In the second quote I highlighted, Roger tells a story of how he and some other major BCH holders discussed paying Amaury off to leave BCH alone. He refers to it as an "extortion fee". Roger reveals that he directly asked Amaury how much it would take for him to stop the IFP, and Amaury's answer was 22 million BCH, which is basically saying no amount of money will change his mind. Then after some more back and forth, Amaury comes up with $200M, which was probably a dig at Roger's $200M BCH fund than anything else, a topic that we have not heard Roger mention on his own since his big announcement back in November 2019.

The point I am making is that while Roger seems like he is ready to jump ship as soon as the going gets tough, Amaury has steadfastly stuck with BCH for the last three years. And even when someone tries to bribe him, he refuses. What this shows me is Amaury's strong commitment to BCH and that he believes the IFP is critical to its success.

While many of you believe Amaury is using the IFP to line his own pockets, it is clear to me that this is not the case. In part 1 of this series, I highlighted Roger telling us that ABC hired away one of his best developers. If all ABC wants to do is pay themselves, why would they spend money hiring more talent?

Whatever you may think of ABC, I don't think you can question their intentions, and if you do, I think you simply aren't paying close enough attention.

All Roger has been doing is making false promises. He announced a $200M fund that has never materialized. He has talked about implementing Cash Fusion into his wallet which has never materialized. He has talked about a BCH debit card that never materialized. He boasts about what a successful business he runs while having to lay off the majority of his employees. He talks about significantly funding ABC when his books show he has barely funded them at all. He even takes credit for other people's donations as if they were his own.

Meanwhile, Amaury has only done what he said he would do while also trying to warn us of what will happen if we continue down the path we have been on. I think it's time we finally start listening to Amaury. He warned people about Segwit2x. He warned people about BU. He warned people about Craig Wright. And now he's warning us about not enabling the IFP and undergoing another split.

Linked below are the portions of the video I've quoted above in case you want to hear it straight from Roger's mouth.

(P.S.: Watch how quickly this post gets downvoted here on read and on Reddit. People don't want you to hear what I have to say. Please share this article so that everyone has a chance to hear all sides of the story.)