I was reading a thread where someone asked if the BCH community understands the network effect of BTC. That's when I realized the BCH community understands the network effect better than most. The crux of the understanding comes from realizing network effect isn't just about "right now" and what were the headlines about price activity this morning... it's also about what the network under effect was doing yesterday, what's actually happening today, and what's the network going to look like and be used for in the future.
Let's shift gears and take a trip down memory lane to the late 1990s and early 2000s in the United States where America Online (AOL), an internet service provider, was the most popular way to get to the internet. Heck, most people thought AOL's servers _were_ the internet. (Here's the Wikipedia entry if you're too lazy to look it up yourself: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AOL) Trust me, AOL was a big, big name when it came to using your first home computer and connecting to a server.
TV commercials would mention AOL keywords (basically, search terms) and dot com domain names in the same sentence... like Find us with AOL Keyword "This Awesome Product" or go to www.thisawesomeproduct.com . AOL was super important to advertisers and service providers because people couldn't separate the Internet from AOL in their heads. At the height of its power, AOL merged with media conglomerate Time Warner and renamed the whole shebang to AOL Time Warner... something which had barely existed a decade ago before its brand tied to one of the most influential companies of the entire 20th century. EVERYONE knew someone who used AOL. People wanted Internet, so they got AOL because that's what everyone else was doing. The network effect was in full swing and AOL investors were loving it!
But the network effect does not last forever. Ask speakers of Latin. Oh, wait, they died out and their language (as a whole, at least) went with them. As a whole, it wasn't useful enough to keep intact and in constant use. Better words and combinations of words came along and got spread out. Likewise, eventually, most AOL users figured out how to get to the Internet, which was able to offer a wider variety of services and things beyond AOL's walled garden. It turns out inter-connected computers was the important thing, not the brand name of AOL, but it took a little while for people to collectively figure that out.
Fast forward to 2005, when the vast majority of society had learned what the Internet could do and AOL couldn't. The AOL that had taught them how to use the Internet was not necessary anymore. The $10/month fee to use AOL was not necessary anymore once there were cheaper options. The stock market started to figure it out. Economics and competition had dried up the sweet, sweet margin icing that had made AOL Wall Street's darling. No-name ISPs, cable modems, and FiOS were people's new gateways onto the Internet. The network effect that had once skyrocketed AOL's value had evaporated into a diaspora of websites and services.
Enough history. Fast forward back to today. People (and headlines) are starting to figure Cryptocurrency and Bitcoin are two different things. Crypto novelty is starting to wear thin and utility is going to be weighted more heavily as people are confronted with choices. To those new to the space, the Bitcoin (Core) label is still awe-inspiring as because of the headlines it grabs as a speculative instrument, not because of the reasons people are "using" it. To those who believe in Satoshi's original vision, the Bitcoin (Cash) label is still awe-inspiring because of the freedom it continues to provide to its users to transact and its separation of money and state. One of these cryptocurrencies is novel in its functionality as a world-wide system. The other is novel mostly because of jargon and unfulfilled promises.
Now, I know the analogy above for an ISP and a cryptocurrency isn't perfect, but that's because history doesn't repeat itself... it only rhymes. Hopefully you're listening like me and come to the conclusion that Bitcoin Cash is the best way to capture the brand value as the original cryptocurrency while having the economic and technical fundamentals to forge into the world's new economic future.
