A Deep Dive Into Why Bitcoin Cash is About to Take The Center Stage
Misleading Narrative
An interesting narrative has emerged in the cryptocurrency space in the recent years -- that Bitcoin is not meant to be spent, but instead is a *Store of Value* or rather should be thought of as a savings account and not something you transact with on a daily basis. That is to say, any asset (such as Bitcoin) whose value is only derived from the fact that it **gains value** from more **people buying in** has another name -- a Ponzi Scheme (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ponzi_scheme).
On the other hand, in economic theory, any method of exchange derives its value from its usage. I will try to debunk the *Store of Value* narrative and will try to demonstrate that Bitcoin, and every other cryptocurrency, have value (and are of value) because they are useful as a method of exchange, which, in turn, potentially makes them a valuable store of value.
The simple fact that Bitcoin's price has only ever increased through the 12 years of its existence tells me that the source of its value must also have been increasing in proportional amounts.
In order to determine if usage is the source of Bitcoin's value, we can start by looking at the number of daily transactions. While they had been increasing for the first few years of Bitcoin's existence, that growth has stopped in 2016 as we hit the blocksize limit of 1MB, which means that the number of daily transactions on Bitcoin can't go far beyond 300,000.
As we can see, there does not seem to be any correlation between the price of Bitcoin and the number of transactions. If the number of transactions are not an indicator of price, what is?
Back to The Basics
To try and understand where Bitcoin might derive its value from, we have to go back to the basics of Bitcoin. The number of daily transactions is an important metric with regards to growth and adoption, but it isn't necessarily the best indicator of usage as a medium of exchange. In trying to measure the economic activity of a network, we have to account for the aggregated amount (in USD) of each of those daily transactions -- I will refer to this measure as **economic activity**.
While Bitcoin has been expensive and relatively unreliable to transact on since the blocks have been full (which happened in 2016-2017), it remains undeniable that there is a strong relationship between its market cap and the daily transferred value (USD) or daily economic activity.
As a technical note, this metric "Xfer'd Val, Adj" (from https://coinmetrics.io) differs from the very popular "Sent In USD" (from https://bitinfocharts.com/), as CoinMetrics tries to remove noise and change addresses (the amounts you send back to yourself after making a payment, or in other words, the change you'd get after paying for something in cash). I believe this might be a more accurate representation of the economic activity happening on the chain -- the full description of this metric can be found here : https://docs.coinmetrics.io/info/metrics/TxTfrValAdjUSD
If we take a closer look at the data since late 2019, we can also see that the daily economic activity has increased five-fold from 2.5B to over 12.5B a day on a 7 day moving average, which correlates with its price increase.
It is important to remember that while Bitcoin's fees are high, it remains a much more efficient way to transfer large sums of money internationally without having to go through the legacy financial system. The legacy financial system imposes an inordinate burden on businesses and individuals in the form of regulatory restrictions, fees and delays -- as anything slower than an instant transfer of value is a wasted opportunity.
It is my hypothesis that Bitcoin has been serving an **irreplaceable need for businesses and individuals to be able to transfer wealth** in a way that is impossible through the legacy financial system.
In order to try to get a ballpark estimate of this baseline economic activity, let us look at the period of April 2018 through October 2020 -- a period of relative calmness in the crypto ecosystem. Here we can see that Bitcoin's daily economic activity ranges between 1B and 3B (USD) at a price of $4,000 to $12,000.
Economic Activity Supports the Price of Bitcoin
Going back to the chart of economic activity vs. price, we can clearly see that following each bull run (2011, 2013, and 2017) **the economic activity of Bitcoin never falls back to a point prior to the last bull run**. Up until now, every cycle has brought more permanent economic activity to the ecosystem, which has supported the price through the periods of little to no media attention or speculation.
Liquidity
A good question to ask would be "Considering that the fees are so high on Bitcoin why does it have such a high economic activity when there are cheaper alternatives like Bitcoin Cash?". If we assume that every decision is rational, and that the economic activity on Bitcoin exists there because it is the best available choice, then the only logical conclusion points to liquidity.
By liquidity, I mean the ability to buy and sell large amounts without affecting the price much or at all. In that regard, Bitcoin being the largest cryptocurrency by a quite significant margin, is then by definition the best choice when moving large amounts of money in and out of the crypto ecosystem.
Where Does Bitcoin Cash Come Into Play?
Now that we have a model that might describe which properties of a currency might support its price -- the number of daily transactions multiplied by their respective amounts -- we can start to apply this model to other currencies to validate our hypothesis. As a note, we can use the price to compare Bitcoin and Bitcoin Cash, but it is important to instead use the market cap (the price multiplied by the number of total coins) when comparing currencies with different total supply. In the case of Bitcoin and Bitcoin Cash, the supply is nearly identical.
Looking at the above chart, we can see that while Bitcoin Cash's economic activity was very high in the hype of 2017, it failed to retain a significant portion of the economic activity on Bitcoin, explaining the reality that the price of Bitcoin Cash has been declining with regards to Bitcoin. It also seems like the **large** **changes in economic activity are reflected in price with a significant time delay**. It only took until early 2018 for the economic activity of Bitcoin Cash to fall down to the baseline of ~50-200M (which was the range of economic activity maintained through 2020), but the price only significantly fell in the later part of 2018.
Another interesting point is that, when looking at the same baseline in Bitcoin Cash's economic activity (~50-200M of daily economic activity in the 2018-2020 period), if we zoom out (chart below), we can see that this was extremely similar to both Bitcoin's 2014-2017 economic activity and price movement.
Bitcoin Cash is Taking Bitcoin's Lunch
In the last few months, the economic activity on Bitcoin Cash has skyrocketed to some really incredible levels while its number of daily transactions has overtaken Bitcoin's. The current economic activity on Bitcoin Cash is in the process of surpassing the baseline economic activity of Bitcoin prior to October 2020, and is still increasing steadily.
The best explanation for this is that it is directly caused by the rising fees on Bitcoin. As we can see in the following chart: **economic activity picks up on Bitcoin Cash at the point where it became clear that the mean transaction fee on Bitcoin would not fall back below $5**.
While it is difficult to know for a fact that the relatively large increase in economic activity on Bitcoin Cash is occurring due to new activity emerging or because of existing activity migrating from Bitcoin, the timing of the economic activity increase being perfectly timed with the transaction fees on Bitcoin increasing steadily and showing no signs of slowing -- points to it being the latter; **economic activity is shifting from Bitcoin to Bitcoin Cash despite having much lower liquidity.**
In terms of understanding the scale of such a migration of economic activity, we can look at the price of bitcoin being supported by a daily economic activity of ~1.5B -- $4,000 to $8,000 USD.
So, what kind of conclusions can we take away from this?
In the most conservative take, **Bitcoin Cash is severely undervalued** and that a significant price correction can be expected in the coming weeks or months. It is also possible that **Bitcoin's** **baseline economic activity that has supported its price until now has recently shifted to Bitcoin Cash.**
What is everyone's noise.cash username? Looking for thinkers and builders to subscribe to, in order to find that sweet sweet signal. Feel free to subscribe to me too, where I'll post some of my thoughts on topics related (sometimes tangentially) related to Bitcoin Cash: https://noise.cash/u/F.B. (this link is broken because it won't catch the period at the end of the url, but I also put a link in my bio here)
I think we can all enrich our lives by surrounding ourselves with good people.
It's Time For Bitcoin Cash
Needless to say that 2020 has been a year unlike all others, between the pandemic, lock-downs, the stock-market crash and civil unrest. One of the things that worries me the most is the irresponsible printing of money that has reached unprecedented heights. Throughout the world, media and governments are busy pulling wool (or trying to) over the eyes of the people who are set to lose the most while reassuring them that everything is fine. In this article I want to highlight the importance of money, show exactly how troubling the situation is, and what we can collectively do about it.
Money is Everything
Without context, this might seem like a controversial idea, but please bear with me. Money is everything, not because it matters more than everything else or that it should be prioritized in spite of everything else, but because it is the facilitator for everything that we need. In its broadest description, money is a representation of value, which can then be exchanged for goods and services as agreements are reached. Many will say that they do not care about accumulating wealth, and that they prefer to focus on happiness, travel, experiences, family or any other flavor of fulfillment; and it is my argument that money facilitates all of the above.
Two very simple truths of life are that time is not infinite, and that all things take time. With that in mind, in order to travel (or accomplish any other fulfilling endeavor), we must use the products, services and innovations that others have developed. We can certainly try to swim across the ocean, but it might be too difficult or take too long. We can try to create our own tools out of raw materials in order to create our own boat (or plane if we feel very ambitious), but it doesn't seem far fetched to conclude that exchanging money for a plane ticket is a far more efficient use of our time.
My argument here is not that we should spend more time trying to acquire money, but that it is critical in a healthy society that all people have access to a way to preserve the value of the money they have worked so hard for. Money is an expression of our freedom. If we can predict that we can sustain ourselves for a given set of time, we are free during that time. However, if our money loses value at an unpredictable rate, our freedom is equally eroded because it prevents us from making those predictions.
Why You Should Care
Inflation is a fancy word to distract us from the fact that governments have granted themselves a monopoly on the counterfeiting of money – and as such have legalized it. Historically speaking, fiat money (government issued currency that is not backed by a commodity such as gold) is relatively new. However, the effects of a sudden increase in what is used for commerce has been studied for a long time and is called the **Cantillon Effect**, which will help us understand the insidious effects of inflation. Below is Richard Cantillon's (1755) description of what happened when a new gold mine was found (emphasis mine):
the owner of these mines, the entrepreneurs, the smelters, refiners, and all the other workers will increase their expenses in proportion to their profits. Their households will consume more meat, wine, or beer than before. They will become accustomed to wearing better clothes, having finer linens, and to having more ornate houses and other desirable goods. Consequently, they will give employment to several artisans who did not have that much work before and who, for the same reason, will increase their expenditures. All this increased expenditures on meat, wine, wool, etc., **necessarily reduces the share of the other inhabitants in the state who do not participate at first in the wealth of the mines in question**.
When comparing the gold miners in Cantillon’s example to the governments of today, the similarities lie in the simple fact that they are both contributing to the influx of new wealth entering an economy. On the other hand, the gold miners are entrepreneurs that took on significant risk in order to discover and exploit a new gold mine – and deserve to be rewarded by the fruits of their labor – while governments and banks issuing newly minted money take on no such risk. Cantillon’s conclusion is that new wealth entering an economy disproportionately benefits those who benefit first, and thus creating an imbalance of wealth. The fact that governments choose the recipients of the newly minted money, means that they are acting as de facto wealth redistributors – in the perverse sense that the working class’ money ends up with businesses that are wealthy enough to afford lobbying or that have grown to the point where they are “too big to fail” (2008 economic bailout).
Inflation not only erodes our freedom by devaluing the currency we have no choice in using, but it also furthers the wealth inequality between the rich and the poor. As a matter of fact, inflation is the driving force behind the somber reality that 50% of Americans collectively own less than 1% of the wealth in America. There are many other indirect consequences of inflation, such as making it increasingly difficult for the average person to have access to real-estate. By devaluing the currency, inflation disproportionately drives wealthy people to seek other ways to preserve their wealth. https://www.axios.com/wealth-gap-united-states-bottom-50-top-1-percent-b89062ea-58fe-4f8c-853a-ad212a215330.html
Ten months into COVID-19 and hyperinflation is already here. The basic money supply (M1) in the United States has increased from 4T to 6T (a 50% increase) since the beginning of 2020. Coincidentally, since the bottom of the March economic crash, the Dow Jones Industrial Average went from just under 20k to 30k (another 50% increase). While not all countries are printing as much money as the United States, it paints a grim picture with regards to the future of the financial independence and prosperity of the 99%. https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/money-supply-m1 https://www.marketwatch.com/investing/index/DJIA
What is Bitcoin Cash
To try and explain it in the simplest ways, Bitcoin Cash is a digital currency. To explain what a digital currency is, it is important to realize unless you are dealing with physical coins and bills, you are most likely already using a digital currency in your daily life. Your credit card, bank account, PayPal balance are all examples of popular cases of digital currencies.
Decentralized
The big difference with regards to Bitcoin Cash is that it is decentralized and requires no trusted third party. What decentralized means, is that instead of the digital currency living in one server or a combination of servers belonging to a single legal entity (e.g. Servers that your bank or credit card company runs or pays for), they are run on thousands of servers ran by different unaffiliated individuals or companies who participate in the Bitcoin Cash ecosystem. This has two very significant consequences: 1) that the Bitcoin Cash network cannot be shut down and 2) that we become our own banks.
For all digital currencies, since they are (as the name might hint) digital and not physical (and therefore cannot be physically counted), they must be represented by a balance sheet or ledger of sorts in order to track your final balance, this is typically what you would see on your online banking website, or credit card statements you get in the mail. Typically you would trust your bank to keep accurate records, with Bitcoin Cash, you do not need to place your trust in a third party, because your ledger and balance is kept accurate with cryptography and mathematics. This also means that nobody can tamper with your funds as they would be able to if they hacked into your bank.
Peer to peer
As there is no trusted third party necessary to facilitate a transaction, transactions are completely peer to peer, as it would be giving physical currency to another person, but from anywhere in the world.
Permission-less
Bitcoin Cash is a completely free and voluntary network, you do not need anyone's permission, or need to sign up anywhere to start receiving and sending Bitcoin Cash. This also means that nobody can stop you from using the network or freeze your funds if they don't agree with the type of business you are conducting. Conversely, at a bank, the registration process is quite complicated, as they require a lot of personal information and reserve themselves the right to freeze your funds or close your account at their discretion.
Low fees and Near Instant Transactions
Transactions on the Bitcoin Cash network are received by peers nearly instantly, and for a fee of less than a fifth of a penny, meaning that it is viable for every day transactions as well as larger transfers. Conversely credit card (or other digital payment processors) transactions cost merchants a flat fee in combination with a percentage of the purchase amount. In this way, Bitcoin Cash is closer to physical cash than common digital payment methods.
Deflationary
Without getting into technical details, newly created Bitcoin Cash are rewarded to those who spend resources running and securing the network. The rate at which new Bitcoin Cash are created is determined in advance (since its inception) and set to decrease by half every four years. This means that Bitcoin Cash is a viable long-term hedge against inflationary currencies, and will allow us to plan our futures.
How We Can Opt-Out with Bitcoin Cash
To quote Murray N. Rothbard (America’s Great Depression, 1963):
[...] the clearest way of preventing inflation is to outlaw fractional-reserve banking, and to impose a 100 percent gold reserve to all notes and deposits.… Fraud is equivalent to theft, for fraud is committed when one part of an exchange contract is deliberately not fulfilled after the other’s property has been taken. Banks that issue receipts to non-existent gold are really committing fraud, because it is then impossible for all property owners (of claims to gold) to claim their rightful property.
As this is clearly not happening in the United States, or any other country for that matter, the only logical step is to turn towards Bitcoin Cash. Due its unique properties, we now have an alternative to the corrupt legacy financial systems that have been siphoning away the wealth and oppressing the freedom of honest people. More importantly, Bitcoin Cash is freedom. You can see it and feel it when people talk about Bitcoin Cash, you can see the gleam in their eyes when they understand the far reaching implications that this financial revolution will have and how it will improve the lives of every single person on earth.
**Bitcoin Cash is where self-interest intersects with the greater good.**
IFP? More Like Why FP
Preamble
All the discussion around the Infrastructure Funding Plan (IFP) has been extremely stimulating. I have spent a lot of time thinking about its implications, and the motivations of people behind their support or opposition. I think that in order to stay sane, we have to realize something: we have spent our entire lives under the rule of governments. Many of us live comfortable lives and are content paying a significant portion of our income to our respective governments because we are conditioned to think that there are no viable alternatives.
Central-planning is inherently flawed. Even if we completely eradicate corruption, no human – however virtuous – can possibly do a perfect job in terms of planning how and where tax money is spent. In the real world – and by experience – spending other people’s money is a recipe for disaster. It also increases the marginal cost of a running society. You have to pay people to plan where the money should go. The world’s greatest recessions and economic downturns were caused by the decisions of humans. Those very decisions are what fueled the creation of Bitcoin in the first place.
With tomorrow’s computational power and wealth of data, it might be conceivable to create a government directed by AI that would allocate money where it is truly needed. However there is a much simpler solution that has been staring us in the face.
**Free Market And The IFP**
In economics, a **free market** is a system in which the prices for goods and services are self-regulated by the open market and by consumers. In a free market, the laws and forces of supply and demand are free from any intervention by a government or other authority and from all forms of economic privilege, monopolies and artificial scarcities.
source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_market
In Bitcoin Cash, the IFP would break the current free market, where the market decides what is and isn’t valuable. The issue of funding developers working on the Bitcoin Cash public goods has to be solved without breaking the free market.
I won’t go into detail about why the IFP also breaks the incentives in Bitcoin Cash, because @fatalglory already did a great job with that: https://read.cash/@fatalglory/a-rothbardian-evaluation-of-the-ifp-f69ada2e
**Government And Trust**
We are trained and educated to believe in Statism. We are brainwashed to believe that there is there no alternative. We are trained to be lazy; it is so easy to not have to worry about these difficult and complicated topics. All we have to do is go to school, find a job, and watch TV when we get home.
A significant portion of the support for the IFP stems from the fact that we are all encouraged by society to believe in the state, to find comfort in authority and to even trust in it, as it betrays us time and time again. Politicians wouldn’t lie to get elected, right? They wouldn’t manipulate us for power? It’ll totally be different next time, right?
One of the most powerful concept in Bitcoin is that it is completely trust-less. Unfortunately the IFP breaks this principle with the introduction of the whitelist. I am confident that every member on the whitelist has the interest of Bitcoin Cash first and foremost, but I refuse to introduce trust in the Bitcoin protocol. Humans are fallible, the protocol shouldn’t rely on that.
**Block Reward And Rent-seeking**
When Bitcoin was created, there was a need to distribute new coins in an efficient and fair way. If Satoshi had given himself all 21M Bitcoins, you can be sure it would have never taken off. He could have given some to people who were interested in p2p electronic cash, but all this (and most conceivable alternatives) is incredibly inefficient. The block reward acts as a “double-whammy” because it distributes new Bitcoins fairly and efficiently following economic incentives, and rewards the miners’ investment in hardware, real-estate and electricity, thus ensuring the security of the network.
While a lot of people have concluded that it’s disingenuous to say that the IFP is a tax, there is also the misconception that it is a fee. The IFP is not a fee in the same sense that users will pay a fee to miners for their transactions to be included in a block, because the miners can only take the fee **after** the block has been mined, not before. What the IFP truly is, is a form of rent-seeking.
Rent-seeking is an attempt to obtain economic rent (i.e., the portion of income paid to a factor of production in excess of what is needed to keep it employed in its current use) by manipulating the social or political environment in which economic activities occur, rather than by creating new wealth.
source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rent-seeking
While funding Bitcoin Cash public goods is an extremely worthy endeavor, rewarding (or paying) parties before any work is done goes against the economic theory that we all bought-in when joining the Bitcoin (Cash) community. It’s the reason why monopolies, governments and large corporations protected from competition by gate-keeping laws are so inefficient, corrupted and wasteful.
The most qualified person to spend your money is **you**, and nobody but you. We all got into Bitcoin (Cash) because it challenges the status-quo, and has the potential to drastically change and bring more fairness and equality to the world.
**A Statist’s Solution to Funding**
That’s what the IFP truly is: a Statist’s solution to funding. And I don’t mean that in a derogatory way, or as a way to start argument based on what we each identify with. I mean that in a very simple way:
If you believe that the state is legitimate, it only makes sense to try and install state-like authority and central-planning in a system that is organically anarchist.
I fervently believe that we can solve infrastructure funding without compromising any of our values. Which is why I support initiatives like Bitcoin Cash Node and @flipstarter. https://read.cash/@freetrader/bitcoin-cash-node-1ba09766 https://read.cash/@flipstarter
[sponsors]
The Values of Bitcoin Cash, Or How To Lead The Revolution (Without The IFP)
I've spent the last two weeks thinking about the Infrastructure Funding Plan and reading every single article that was published here about it. Before I begin, I'd like to thank the entire community for being so vocal on this topic, it really shows that we care and that we're involved. I'd like to also thank @Jiang_Zhuoer_BTC.TOP_CEO because while it's clear not everyone agrees, putting forth a plan to fund development makes me extremely bullish for the future of Bitcoin Cash.
No, I don't think it's a power grab, and I respect the work and effort behind this, because it's not easy to get people who typically compete with one another to agree on something like this. I think that everyone involved is acting in good faith.
When the plan was announced, I was immediately very hyped because while I wasn't sure if I wholeheartedly supported the plan (yet?), the implications of miners banding together to fund development of the Bitcoin Cash protocol are huge. While a lot of people got offended at the Non-Debate Theory, it's a very powerful concept. None of the things that the Non-Debate Theory gave us were perfect, but they were *clear improvements* over status-quo. Bitcoin Cash wouldn't be alive today without the Non-Debate Theory, because we would still be arguing on what a safe blocksize increase is or what the perfect algorithm to calculate the perfect blocksize is. We would probably have a bigger chunk of the market share had we forked off from Bitcoin Core sooner. The Non-debate Theory is about iterating quickly; learning and improving on what works, and leaving what doesn't work behind. I think we would do well to not get offended by the Non-Debate Theory and even to embrace it.
I remain convinced that although flawed, the plan would work in injecting much-needed capital back into development. However, I don't think we should adopt the plan.
Being Idealistic
Before I explain why I have changed my mind, I do think that we're in the process of writing history, and that Bitcoin Cash has the best chance to dramatically change the world for the better. It will lift people out of poverty, empower them and restore some balance in this deeply inequal world. We're on the front-row seats of this revolution that will give the internet (revolution) a run for its money. And we definitely need money and talent to get there.
But I don't think we should do the IFP. Most of us are idealistic, and that's why we got involved with Bitcoin back in the day and it's why we're involved in Bitcoin Cash now. I think that we, not only have a shot at revolutionizing money, but also revolutionizing governance. I think we should show the entire world that Bitcoin Cash can, not only be self-sufficient, but thrive on voluntary contributions. If we call ourselves libertarians and voluntaryists, if we believe that taxation is theft; then we have to actually stand before our beliefs.
While the plan is clearly clever, it's not consistent with the vision of having decentralized governance (and governments) and it's not consistent with our values. If we need a road built in our town, we will go and build it, simply because we know that the benefits of having a road outweighs the cost of building that road. We will build it ourselves, we will not trick or coerce others to build or pay for it instead of us.
So I can hear you thinking "Well, donations haven't cut it so far, and we can't afford to lose developers." and you're absolutely right. Donations so far haven't been enough, because we shouldn't call them donations. Most of us (myself included, until recently) didn't realize the simple fact that *investing* a small portion of your position in BCH increases the likelihood that your BCH growing (more) significantly. I also realized that the "tragedy of the commons" doesn't apply in crypto simply because it is not a resource that can be depleted. The holders who aren't reinvesting a portion of their holdings are actually hurting their long-term returns.
How do we fix this?
We need to educate each other on the realities and governance goals of Bitcoin Cash. We need to cooperate on growth, and we need to create the technologies that will allow us to fulfill this vision.
Here is a very incomplete list of things that could help us:
Reviving Lighthouse (again!)
Bitcoin Cash based Patreon for content creators (or development teams!)
Using SLP tokens to crowdfund, and better visibility and accountability of the work devs are doing
I know that personally I will be much more involved with the community (both in terms of time and money) than I have in the past.
How has Bitcoin Cash changed your life?
I was inspired to start this conversation because of @gersonarellano's post about his achievements because of Bitcoin Cash. https://read.cash/@Gersonarellano/my-achievements-with-bch-in-a-country-in-crisis-f24f7b52
Let me share my story of how Bitcoin Cash has changed and shaped my life. For this, we need to go back to 2012, when things were very different. I had just discovered a subreddit -- /r/bitcoin -- whose slogan was "Magic internet money".
I was intrigued, which means I also had a lot of questions. How does this all work? What's a blockchain? Who is Satoshi -- something tells me I wasn't the only one wondering about this. What is the Byzantine Generals Problem? Is decentralized peer-to-peer electronic cash really possible? Needless to say, I dove right in to try and quench my unquenchable thirst for more Bitcoin things. I downloaded bitcoin-qt and tried to mine with my cpu (Spoiler. It didn't work). From that moment on, I was enthralled by the power and potential of Bitcoin and cryptocurrency. From that moment, I was convinced that Bitcoin would be the next revolution. I would talk about it to my friends, to my family, and I wouldn't -- no -- I *couldn't* shut up about it.
One question that continued to nag in my mind was about transaction fees and whether or not Bitcoin could really scale globally. Satoshi wasn't worrying about it, and my fears were assuaged by the fact that Gavin was advocating for a quota of free transactions based on coin days destroyed.
I'm not exactly sure when I started worrying about Bitcoin not being able to scale due to the 1MB block size limit and the core developers inability or lack of desire to address the issue (probably around 2014 or 2015). I still remember how I felt the day Mike Hearn left the community. I remember the censorship and fall of /r/bitcoin. I remember a specific conversation with my father about Bitcoin and Ethereum, expressing my frustration over the dead-lock that Bitcoin was in due to the scaling debate. I remember being nostalgic about how simple it all had been back then.
For the first time in years I stopped reading /r/bitcoin, and had completely lost hope in Bitcoin. In 2016, Ethereum was showing a lot of promise, but the fact that there was no limit to how much Ether could be in circulation did not sit right with me.
In August 2017 when the first viable fork of Bitcoin came to life, my interest in crypto was finally reignited. I remember the shit-storm that SegWit2x was and how I was so ... *relieved* that there was a version of Bitcoin without SegWit. I knew this fork of Bitcoin would be the best candidate for p2p electronic cash. I knew it would change the world and empower the people.
Bitcoin was *back*, and so was *I*.
Tell me your story.
@F.B.
