OGs got into Bitcoin when it was the original and the biggest, if not the only, crypto around. They followed the various forks till they ended up at Bitcoin Cash. It is different with us n00bs. We came to Bitcoin Cash when it was already Bitcoin Cash. When there were a plethora of other coins to choose from, we chose Bitcoin Cash. We were not influenced by past loyalties/grudges or heavy bags. I want to try and explain why.
I heard about Bitcoin perhaps when many of you did. 2012-2014, I don’t really remember. I do remember thinking ‘cool’, but that was about it. Besides, I had other stuff going on in my life, young kids etc. By then, bitcoin already had a mainstream media presence so I was able to casually follow it from the side lines. Fast-forward a few years and the kids are a little older and I have a little more free time. I decide to revisit that bitcoin thing and learn a bit more.
Also by this point, the world itself seemed increasingly to be going down a strange path. It seemed harder and harder to be simply left alone. I started to seriously doubt whether my children would grow up to enjoy the same freedoms I had. Most disheartening of all was that people seemed to welcome it. I remember having conversations with colleagues who thought "people shouldn’t be allowed to be anonymous on the internet because it means they can get away with saying such horrible things… the government should do something".
I didn’t even know where to begin with that. It seemed to me that trying to change people’s minds was a lost cause. There would always be an unbridgeable divide.
It was then that I made the connection. Because Bitcoin was permissionless money it could be a powerful tool for personal freedom, one equal to, if not greater than, the internet itself. This made it important in my view. I wanted it to succeed. It needed to succeed.
This was after the BCH fork but before the BSV fork. Here I made my first mistake. I joined crypto twitter.
The first thing you learn on crypto twitter is ‘Roger bad’. I did not know who Roger was or why he was bad, but it apparently had something to do with ‘bcash’. Beyond this, I learned frustratingly little. Crypto twitter did not seem interested in what I had thought the ‘mission’ of bitcoin was. They only seemed to care about trading bitcoin for dollars. After a few frustrating months and another fork I was growing disillusioned with bitcoin. Was it all only about currency trading and getting fiat rich?
Fortunately, I also decided to check out that Roger guy to find out why exactly ‘bcash’ was so terribly bad. Correct decision, because just as my interest was waning I discovered in the much maligned Bitcoin Cash a version of Bitcoin which seemed to align with what I though Bitcoin was supposed to be.
There are many other great coins out there, but Bitcoin Cash seems to most consistently and stubbornly ally with the cause of personal freedom and censorship resistance. It might have been easier for BCH if it hadn’t done this. Perhaps if it had made more of an effort to chase institutional money, or just produced a few more hodl memes then it would have a bigger market cap? But I don’t care. If I cared about moon/lambo/market-cap I would have stuck with BTC or ETH.
And here’s the thing. The above is probably true of most newcomers to BCH from this point on. Anybody who now comes to this space now cares more about personal freedom and censorship resistance than about trading or DeFi. If they didn't, they would not have got any further than ETH.
So don’t worry too much about chasing past glories. Focus on what makes Bitcoin Cash what Bitcoin was supposed to be – a tool for freedom.
Amazing post... thank you