Bitcoin ABC Has Capitulated

Bitcoin ABC announced today that they will continue providing a version of their full node software for Bitcoin Cash, as well as for their increasingly unlikely minority fork ABC coin.

I draw several conclusions from this announcement.

Capitulation

After the Bitcoin Cash chain split, which is now guaranteed to take place on November 15

This is an admission that ABC can not get majority hash and thus at best would be forking off of Bitcoin Cash into a new “ABC” coin, as I have been predicting for nearly 3 months.

He Will Try this Again

Businesses wanting to follow BCHN, a chain that will fund network development from donations, should run the BCHN edition of our software

Amaury is keeping his options open so he can do an IFP in BCH down the road; presumably after the rest of us implode in constant infighting, as he claims will happen.

This is a gambit to retain some market share among miners and maybe even achieve by crook what he could not achieve by hook.

The Funding Red Herring

Amaury claims he can fund network development “predictably” from his ABC coin network but that Bitcoin Cash will have to rely on “donations”.

But he can not predict the price of his ABC coin from which his supposedly superior funding would be coming from.

Just look at the collapse of futures prices at CoinEx, where “BCHA” is valued by the marketplace at 5% of Bitcoin Cash BCH.

Amaury’s narrative simply does not hold up.

We still believe that reliable funding for network development is crucial for building sound global money

The drumbeat of funding, funding, funding is tired, especially given how successful the flipstarters have been over the last 6 months.

Sure, people building on Bitcoin Cash need funding. But we also need to make forward movement with the resources available to us now. We can’t let one person hold up P2P electronic cash with an issue where the market has signaled against it 95 to 5.

Sponsors not Happy

our major sponsors, have requested we create a version of our software that is compatible with the BCHN chain. 

This is extremely telling. Bitcoin ABC doesn’t have a lot of sponsors. Someone laid down the law for Amaury here in a big way. 

our work on the BCHN [sic] chain will be limited to software maintenance

This suggests that Amaury will keep backporting Core for the Bitcoin Cash BCH chain and will reserve his Avalanche and other experiments for ABC coin, if it even comes into existence. 

ABC coin will likely become a testing grounds for Bitcoin Cash — a glorified testnet — not unlike the Freecash experiment. I expect it will be leveraged for further attempts at taking over Bitcoin Cash.

Amaury has Burned BCHA Holders

By diverting his small team’s focus from being exclusively on ABC coin, he is burning those few BCHA buyers at CoinEx and Poloniex who actually believed in his bizarre plans.

Those people took a great risk and are paying the price for Amaury’s hubris. I hope they are smart enough to not send good money after bad.

Amaury has Burned Team ABC

The small cadre Amaury has collected around himself talked themselves into a groupthink narrative and now their leader has contradicted it.

People have caused themselves noteworthy harm by participating in Team ABC’s antics, and now Amaury has flinched at the 10-yard line.

This is not the way a leader operates.

Bitcoin ABC Chain is Simply Not Viable

Bitcoin ABC’s forked ABC coin is simply not viable.

• not economically viable because the coin is priced too low by the marketplace

• undermanned because they have to replicate Bitcoin Cash infrastructure and few in Team ABC are down for that kind of extended hard work

• not hashrate viable because miners are not supporting them, and the curious new ABC mining pool hasn’t produced a block for 2.5 days

It Was All a Big Bluff

It looks like we are in the home stretch of this threatened network split. A lot of effort was spent to ensure Bitcoin Cash could remain intact, and it seems that perhaps ABC coin will never come into existence.

But I believe that Amaury will use whatever resources are at his disposal going forward to prepare the ground for a third try at an IFP. You may consider Amaury spent, lacking in credibility and representing no danger. You may be right. I mean, I can’t believe any major exchange will take him seriously again after they wasted time preparing for his network split that he himself has now flinched at in the critical final moments.

But going forward we need to be sure we outbuild him and retain a cordial and collaborative atmosphere in Bitcoin Cash. That is our best defense, and coincidentally the best way for us to achieve the Bitcoin Cash mission.

I will continue my work on welcoming new people into Bitcoin Cash and teaching them about it so they too can benefit from P2P electronic cash for the world.

Let’s do this.