How About "Bitcash" for short? And Why Does the Bitcoin Name Even Matter?

So I wrote an article a few days ago about how I think Bitcoin Cash should change it's name to "Bitcash." And wow, did people hate that idea. Comments on Reddit were overwhelmingly against the idea, except for the one or two obvious trolls that wanted to try and leverage my idea into something that was antagonistic in a way that I would never intend.

Just so it's clear to anyone who might be stumbling across me for the first time, which is likely most people, I am very much in the camp that believes that BCH is the cryptocurrency that works as a crypto should, and in a sane world, would be the one at the forefront of the marketplace. I support BCH and my critiques are always intended to be constructive, to look at what might not be working so that it might be improved.

There were some reasonable counter arguments to my point about the name. However, an issue came to light that I think is a weakness in Bitcoin Cash's community, which I'll get into below. But, however I might assess the criticisms, I'm not so arrogant as to ignore community consensus. No one wants to change the name, so, fine. I surrender.

Though, I still find "Bitcoin Cash" just long and clunky to say. So, I would propose what I probably should have proposed from the start, which is that maybe "Bitcash" could just be an accepted shorthand for "Bitcoin Cash."

Just like my official first name on my birth certificate is "David," but everyone calls me "Dave." Or everyone calls Coca-Cola "Coke." Or Federal Express goes by "FedEx." Similarly, "Bitcoin Cash," could just be made a little friendlier and shorter by using "Bitcash" in casual conversation, while preserving "Bitcoin Cash" as the official name for any matter of record.

Maybe that's fair enough, or not, we can see. Bitcoin Cash is not a top down organization, so how it's perceived and identified is an emergent property of community consensus. Maybe I'll just start referring to Bitcoin Cash as "Bitcash," and see how it goes. Feel free to join me if you like.

But on to more important matters, like the ones raised in response to my first article.

I'm not going to go through them all, but I found one of them to be very interesting. Which is the idea that holding onto the "Bitcoin" name is a matter of legitimacy, justice, and rightful legacy. The strongest objections to the idea of any kind of name change was that to do anything that removed the word "Bitcoin" from the name would be an admission of "defeat," in that it would imply that Bitcoin Cash is not the true Bitcoin as imagined by Satoshi Nakamoto.

To explain why I think that concept is a weakness of the BCH community, allow me to propose a hypothetical.

What if a magic genie were to come up to you one day and offer you a choice. One option is that BCH will become the dominant world cryptocurrency, accepted in all stores world wide, and well known to be a stable store of value, and a basis for all kinds of tokens that allow for myriad services. Everything BCH aspires to be. But, the catch is, no one will ever know that it was based on Nakamoto's white paper. All connection to the history of Bitcoin will be lost. The word "Bitcoin" will be removed from any and all reference to BCH, and all links back to the Nakamoto whitepaper will disappear. It will be the most important coin, but not recognized as the original coin.

The other option the magic genie offers you is that everyone in the world will be made to realize that BCH is in fact, the true Bitcoin. All other coins claiming to be Bitcoin will dissipate as everyone realizes they are not legitimate. But, the catch is, BCH will never rise above what it is now, and maybe even fade out of popular usage over time. BCH will be remembered in history books as the one crypto that held onto Nakamoto's vision from the start, but adoption won't rise, and may even fade.

Which would you choose? For me, I would choose the first option, no hesitation.

For me, what's important about BCH is the underlying technology and the features that arise from it. Block sizes that increase to meet demand, 0-conf transactions, no need for side-chains until an objectively provable limitation, whatever you call that thing where processing adjusts to keep block times stable... And many other features.

Maybe the most important feature, at least to me, isn't a technological one. BCH is the only crypto that is truly leaderless and without any specific organization that holds sway over its direction. So long as BCH is the cryptocurrency that is run by community consensus without any de facto benevolent dictators, it's probably the coin I trust the most.

What I want is for there to be a cryptocurrency with a certain set of features, and BCH has all those features. I could not care less whether or not some person named Satoshi Nakamoto first thought of it or that everyone acknowledges that legacy. Or that it's called "Bitcoin."

I feel that giving priority to the pursuit of some kind of justice in terms of proving who is ultimately right or wrong to keep a certain name is a whole separate concern from the pursuit of adoption.

Imagine every time you went to buy a shoe by Adidas they gave you a long lecture about how the company was formed because two brothers had a big fight that resulted in one founding Adidas and the other founding Puma. As a person who wants a shoe, not only would that information be irrelevant to me, the discussion of it would very likely strike me as so tedious that it might make me want to walk away and look at Nike. Or Xero or Vivo Barefoot, which are some of my actual shoe brand choices these days.

That kind of lecture about the history of the division between Adidas and Puma is exactly the kind of irrelevant history that no one should need to hear when being introduced to Bitcoin Cash. Sure, it's the "true" Bitcoin. So what?

When choosing a product, what matters to me are features. The only way in which a products history or legacy matters to me is if there is an overwhelmingly strong connection to human rights abuses or environmental destruction or something where I feel use of that product contributes to a larger social problem. But almost every company has its issues, so it's a sliding scale.

Ideological fights and company divisions based around internal organizational politics are not reasons to choose a product. Nothing about Bitcoin Cash is made more appealing because it has the "right" history. It either works, or it doesn't.

Do you want to be right, or do you want to be successful?