When it comes to r/btc, a lot of people in the Bitcoin Cash community don't seem to care about price at all when it comes to Bitcoin Cash. Just today, it lost a crazy amount of value, and is now worth less than Ethereum. The general community seems to be nonchalant over this, which is extremely worrying as the price matters A LOT when it comes to Bitcoin Cash. I'm not an SoV proponent, but yes, price 100% matters, and the direction this community is taking by focusing purely on utility is disappointing.
Let's be real: people aren't into Bitcoin Cash purely for being a medium of exchange, but they're also bullish on it, which is why they hold it as well instead of only spending. If we want BCH to succeed, we still need to see what outsiders think of it, and what we can do to change their perspective on Bitcoin Cash. Just to gauge an idea of what people think about Bitcoin Cash, I'll show a few examples of outsiders' views on Bitcoin Cash (specifically those who aren't just BTC maximalists).
One of the first examples I will be taking a look at is a video by Coin Bureau. Overall, he does not seem to have a positive view of Bitcoin Cash, and is skeptical of it, despite seeing its use-case:
Most people will look at the transactions per second, and total transactions on the Bitcoin network, and conclude that it must mean faster tps in general. However, this is just a reflection of the widespread use of the network.
This is true. The more this gap can narrow for Bitcoin and Bitcoin Cash, the easier it will be for Bitcoin Cash to attract the attention of those within the crypto community. They'll be more likely to Bitcoin Cash seriously, and considering its utility, adoption will increase without a doubt.
People are still using [BTC] extensively even if there may be slower transaction times. And the transaction times are indeed slower. I recently made a purchase with Bitcoin Cash and it confirmed almost instantly. A Bitcoin transaction of a similar size took me over 15 minutes. So, the Bitcoin Cash blokes have got that one going for them.
I think this will be solved once people start having issues with fees on Bitcoin, and eventually realize that there are plenty of other cryptocurrencies that provide fast and cheap payments. That time hasn't come, but when it does, we'll only lead in the transaction count and active addresses if we can build some amount of speculation and hype surrounding our coin, so many people are at the very least aware of it and holding it. When adoption increases, there will be people ready to spend Bitcoin Cash on purse.io, and many other websites where Bitcoin Cash is accepted.
The total transactions and throughput is important as it gives us an indication of the widespread adoption of the cryptocurrency in general. Taking a look at these charts, it appears to be quite stark. Despite the higher fees and slower transactions, bitcoin is used overwhelmingly more than Bitcoin Cash. In fact, transactional demand on Bitcoin Cash has been so low relative to Bitcoin that is not even filling up the blocks to the 8 megabyte limit originally set prior to the move to 32 megabytes, so not so great on the adoption front there.
One problem is that people think that the block size limit should only be raised when the network is at full capacity. I think more people should be educated on this topic, and it's important for people to educate others and explain that a network shouldn't be used to maximum capacity. The fact that we're increasing capacity is what matters.
Onto the next metric though network security or more specifically hash power. This is an important metric, as the more hash power there is backing a blockchain, the harder it becomes to run a 51% attack. The long and the short of it is a drop in hash power made it quite cheap to run a 51% attack on rented hash power take a look at those numbers compared to more established chains like Bitcoin and Ethereum and this makes sense if we switch over to the hashpower chart. For Bitcoin, you can see the amount of hashpower supporting it is many multiples of that of Bitcoin cash.
I think this can be clarified as not being as bad as it looks. We all know that the estimated vulnerability is not actually as high as the market perceives it to be. Bitcoin Cash is backed by a lot of hashpower, and there aren't very many financial incentives to 51% attack the network.
Sometimes Bitcoin miners do move over to the Bitcoin cash networks, but given the unique difficulty adjustment algorithm, they move back to the main Bitcoin chain pretty quickly. So on a pure comparison basis, yes Bitcoin cash is cheaper and faster to send. It has wide exchange support, and is backed by some pretty powerful people in crypto. It also has an enthusiastic community that is actively trying to increase its adoption among merchants, yet despite all of this, it's still nowhere near as popular as Bitcoin. The numbers don't lie unfortunately so then the main question is why well because it is not Bitcoin pure and simple. Despite many of its advantages, it's not Bitcoin. There's no denying that the overwhelming interest both from the retail side and from institutional investors is in Bitcoin.
Bitcoin Cash isn't Bitcoin in name, but it is the original idea that people in Bitcoin got into Bitcoin for. It is what made Bitcoin popular as a technology to begin with. I think it's important to realize this. If we don't build a healthy amount of speculation around Bitcoin Cash, it simply is just going to lose its spot in the market. It will eventually be overtaken by other coins, and then the whole "network effect" argument goes out the window. It's clear that Bitcoin Cash is doing something wrong, and that's reflected in the price of it. Despite people desperately pushing for merchant adoption, actual adoption has stagnated, on-chain transactions are at an all time low, and the supposed $200 million fund that was set out to improve Bitcoin Cash infrastructure has gone literally nowhere.
Also, as you can see, the whole DAA issues are brought up here, and so far, I find the progress on fixing Bitcoin Cash's DAA disappointing. Despite there being serious issues with Bitcoin Cash's DAA, and some developers even pointing out how this can be solved, it seems Bitcoin ABC isn't going to actually change ANYTHING in the November hardfork. Their reasoning is the resources required to change the algorithm are not covered by the funding. In my opinion, this isn't a good reason as to why the DAA shouldn't be changed. Bitcoin Cash Node clearly got more than enough funding to generate a study on the current DAA, and they're already coming out with a report in the next few weeks. If BCHN suggests a new DAA, I suggest we implement it, because keeping it is only going to make the price down even further.
Bitcoin Cash does get coverage, and is able to get its message out but it is definitely not as intently watched or followed as Bitcoin. Even when we were approaching the Bitcoin Cash having in April this year, no one was really following it. All eyes were still on the Bitcoin having in May. Here is a chart that shows the tweet volume of Bitcoin versus Bitcoin Cash and Bitcoin. s be pretty stark of course just because Bitcoin gets a lot of airtime it's not something against Bitcoin cash bitcoin gets way more interesting coverage than Ripple or Litecoin, or any of the other old coins, and this is just on the retail investor side. When it comes to the institutional investors, it's quite clear that they know which Bitcoin they want to hold. From legendary stock pickers to large quantifies. From dedicated crypto funds to investment trusts. And on the financial services side, they are lining up to provide solutions around Bitcoin trading or investment. The CME lists Bitcoin futures. Bakkt has Bitcoin options. Fidelity digital investments is offering bitcoin custody. So while Bitcoin Cash can be viewed as most aligned with peer-to-peer digital cash, Bitcoin is still viewed as the gold standard.
The fact that speculation is the reason that more people use Bitcoin should be taken seriously. It just proves that some amount of speculation is necessary for the survival and growth of the coin. So far, it looks like Bitcoin Cash is dying in terms of people interested, and how many people are actually transacting on the network. If our coin is useful already, we should bring in hype/speculation, so when more people get into Bitcoin Cash, they realize its usefulness is commerce and as a way of transferring money.
If we don't bring in ANY speculation, the coin is bound to fail. How are Roger Ver, Jihan Wu, and other strong Bitcoin Cash proponents and advocates not even slightly alarmed/worried about the absolutely abysmal price performance of Bitcoin Cash? Even Bitcoin SV has outperformed Bitcoin Cash in price, and looks to be on pace to overtaking it. Regardless of their view on Craig Wright, what incentive do people have to use Bitcoin SV over Bitcoin Cash? People aren't going to care about the usefulness of Bitcoin Cash in commerce when it only keeps tanking in value. At that point they might as well take credit cards with a slightly higher fee (and almost no volatility).
I remember the crazy Bitcoin and Bitcoin Cash moves that we were experiencing in the run-up to the SegWit2x activation in November of 2017. After the failed activation, Bitcoin started to collapse as Bitcoin cash rallied to over $1,600. Take a look at this chart of Bitcoin cash measured in SATs. Pretty big rally there. I remember thinking to myself that it was unsustainable and would not last. Over the rest of the late 2017 and early 2018 bull run Bitcoin cash was quite volatile compared to Bitcoin. However, ever since its May protocol upgrade, Bitcoin cash has been on a downward trend. There were momentary recoveries here and there, but all in all, a pretty bleak outlook.
This already tells you what you need to know about Bitcoin Cash. People are aware of its advantages, and how much more useful it is as a technology, but its usefulness doesn't matter if the price performance has been absolutely terrible, and continues to become worse over time. The price matters as well, and we should also start focusing on that, and try to actually take advantage of the speculative nature of the market since speculation on Bitcoin Cash would actually make sense, seeing as it is great in terms of technology and more people will actually use, as well as join the community. After the people join based on speculation, it will be hard for them to leave as the price rises, and the user experience is great. It can take great advantage of having a network effect.
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