The following is a draft for a YouTube video I plan to make about Bitcoin Cash. Recently I started a new YouTube channel called "All About Bitcoin Cash".
In my most recent video I try to onboard as many new users - whom I know in real life - as possible. You can find details here.
The next video will be about Bitcoin Cash. I want the new users to understand its history and its mission.
Therefore, I am grateful for your feedback and constructive criticism.
The script begins:
Cryptocurrency
What do you think about when you hear that word?
Getting rich quick? Lambos? Scams? Rug pulls? Elon Musk? Dog memes and rocket emojis?
Well, Bitcoin Cash is different. It's quite different...
What makes Bitcoin Cash different from all the other almost 11,000 cryptocurrencies that exist nowadays?
First of all Bitcoin Cash was the first cryptocurrency.
Some people may disagree with that statement, but that doesn't change the fact that the statement is actually correct.
The first cryptocurrency that was ever invented was called "Bitcoin" and that was in 2009 after the financial crisis.
An anonymous person or a group of people - or other life forms - which called themselves Satoshi Nakamoto invented a currency which cannot be centrally controlled and which cannot be shut down by any government. That way it is money which cannot be printed out of thin air by any government unlike the Dollar, Euro, Pound, Yen and any other fiat currency. It has a limited supply of 21 million Bitcoin, no matter what war a government may want to fight these days or how long a government wants to lock down its population.
Bitcoin uses cryptography to ensure an uncensorable, immutable, borderless payment method.
Satoshi Nakamoto put his ideas into a text document which is called a "white paper". This white paper outlines how the Bitcoin is supposed to work and what its goals are.
On the first page - or even in the title of the white paper - he wrote that he invented a peer-to-peer electronic cash system. What he invented was clearly intended to be used for peer-to-peer cash transactions. However, unfortunately this idea got corrupted and the Bitcoin project was pretty much taken over by those whom it tried to replace - the banks and the credit card companies.
When that happened, some actors tried to slow the Bitcoin payment processing network down. And they succeeded. These actors proposed to build an alternative payment solution called the Lightning Network on top of Bitcoin. And they designed the Lightning Network in a way that would allow them to both control and monetize it.
Of course, they claimed that the Lightning Network cannot be centrally controlled. However, if you take a deep look at its design, you will realise that the only conceivable way it can actually work is with central control.
And let me stress that avoiding central control was one of the main goals why Bitcoin was invented in the first place.
Why is decentralization important?
Because anything that can be centrally controlled can also be shut off relatively easily. And Bitcoin was designed to be resistant to that attack.
Apart from its questionable decentralizability, the Lightning Network was not production ready when it was proposed. It did not work back then and fast forward 7 years to today: It still doesn't really work...
Fortunately, a part of the Bitcoin community wanted to pursue the original goals of the Bitcoin white paper. Their solution was to increase the transaction throughput of the Bitcoin network itself by making the blocks bigger. That's how they got their name "big blockers".
What are blocks? How does a blockchain work?
The way Bitcoin works is it puts transactions into "blocks" which are processed every 10 minutes. And these blocks are then linked in a chain using a "proof of work". Computers basically have to guess numbers until they find one which gives the block an acceptable hash. Once this number has been found, the block can be added to the blockchain. And the more blocks are added to the chain, the harder it gets to change any prior block. That is the security model which makes transactions irreversible.
The big block side of the Bitcoin community wanted to increase the blocksize limit in accordance with the advancement in computer technology: Every year computers become quicker with faster internet connectivity and cheaper memory. The big blockers want to scale the Bitcoin network accordingly while the small blockers wanted to keep the Bitcoin blocksize exactly the same at 1 MiB - or less than one floppy disk - every ten minutes.
The big blockers' goal is too keep the transaction fees low, while the small blockers claim they want the cost for running a node of the Bitcoin network to remain low. However, the reality is that harddisks are ever more affordable and having to buy a new hard disk may be cheaper than paying $5 more on each transaction you make...
The dispute between the small blockers and the big blockers turned out to be unresolvable and ended after a lot of back and forth with the big blockers forking off - or separating - from the small blockers.
The big blockers were hoping to find a compromise with the small blockers. However, unfortunately, the small blockers kept changing their offers. Initially, they were fine with a moderate blocksize limit increase - which never came - and finally, they ended up not changing the blocksize at all - except for a hack solution called "segregated witnesses" or SegWit which effectively increased the blocksize limit from 1 MiB to about 1.4 MiB every 10 minutes. The small blockers seemed to playing on time giving the big blockers the impression that their main goal was to slow down or even deranged the Bitcoin project. This impression was further fuelled by questionable financial ties between the small blockers to banks and credit card companies. The Bitcoin forum also started deleting comments which argued in favor of big blocks.
After a lot of frustration, the big blockers finally decided that there was no compromise to be had with the small blockers and they forked the project.
The big blockers had to find a new name and chose "Bitcoin Cash" to stress the fact that they stayed true to the initial goal of Bitcoin being a peer to peer electronic cash system. The small blockers shifted their goal to "store of value", but ironically, they were allowed to keep the name.
To make this point clear, Bitcoin Cash and Bitcoin used to be the exact same project until the Bitcoin Cash developers decided to follow the original ideas of Satoshi Nakamoto's whitepaper and the Bitcoin core project decided to switch the narrative from "peer-to-peer electronic cash" to "store of value" - or otherwise known as "digital gold".
While you might hear from some people that Bitcoin Cash is a knockoff of Bitcoin that just uses a similar name, this is actually not true at all. Bitcoin and Bitcoin Cash were the exact same projects, the exact same community and then they decided to split and unfortunately in that split, Bitcoin Cash got the short end of the stick and they had to find a different name - even though they followed the white paper, the original design of Bitcoin, closely - and the part of the community which is still allowed to use the Bitcoin name does not.
I know this is confusing. One project stayed true to the original Bitcoin goals, but is now called Bitcoin Cash. The other project does not follow the original Bitcoin philosophy, but still kept the name... To make the distinction between the two projects more clear, we will call what is nowadays known as "Bitcoin" BTC from now on and we will use the name Bitcoin for the common project before the fork.
The early Bitcoin offered fast and cheap transactions - and Bitcoin Cash still offers that today - while BTC has slow transactions which are very costly to send. For this reason some people say that BTC is not an electronic peer-to-peer currency anymore - as it is unusable, for instance, to order a pizza - or to buy a cup of coffee - as the fees are higher than the actual cost of the purchase. Even worse, BTC introduced a feature called "replace by fee". It offers to change a transaction which has not yet been included in a block. This - together with the fact that the BTC network has been congested for years now - makes it unsafe to accept zero confirmation transactions on BTC.
Imagine you tried to pay for a coffee with BTC. First of all, the fees are about $5 to pay for your $4 coffee. Then the merchant needs to wait until your transaction has been included in a block, because otherwise you could change the transaction once you have your coffee and send the money back to you. If you're lucky, your transaction is included in the next block within the next 10 minutes. If you're unlucky, it could take several hours until your transaction is finally included in a block. So, you would have to wait for hours at the coffee place until your transaction was finally processed...
When you try to pay for a cup of coffee with Bitcoin Cash, the fee is less than 1 Cent and the merchant does not have to wait until your transaction is included in a block - as there is no "replace by fee" for Bitcoin Cash transactions. And as the payment processing capability of Bitcoin Cash is far superior to BTC, the network is also not congested. You pay for your coffee and you can leave immediately.
Which crypto would you prefer to use?
The Bitcoin Cash fees are usually lower than $0.01. And Bitcoin Cash has the advantage of offering secure, fast transactions - even with zero confirmations. That way Bitcoin Cash is perfectly capable of making everyday purchases and being used as a peer-to-peer currency.
Bitcoin Cash's Mission
While pretty much all other cryptocurrencies focus on generating higher prices, the main focus of Bitcoin Cash is to replace government-controlled money worldwide and to offer fast, cheap, reliable, uncensorable, borderless transactions for every human being on the planet Earth - and possibly beyond.
Also those people who are otherwise unbanked, because they may live in a poor or third world country.
And Bitcoin Cash is also perfectly suited as a payment network for robots. How do you think robot axis will pay for charging? And how do you think you will pay for one? Bitcoin Cash can easily do that.
To conclude
So you see, Bitcoin Cash has the history. It is the original crypto currency. It has the mission. It is not just about getting rich. It is also about making the world a better place for everyone. And Bitcoin Cash has a bright future.
Don't be left behind. Get on board today and benefit from what will happen.
That is a short version of why I prefer Bitcoin Cash over any other crypto currency. If you are interested in getting rich, but you also want to improve the world at the same time, then Bitcoin Cash is probably the best crypto currency for you as well.
And hey, if you don't want to get rich, but want to help the world, get onboard Bitcoin Cash anyway and donate some of your future wealth which you get for holding - or even better for spending and replacing Bitcoin Cash.
You really made it so easy to understand. Thanks for this explanation. We all want to be rich.