Some quick background for anyone newer to bitcoin: There was a group who split off from the original Bitcoin blockchain in August 2017, into a chain they call “Bitcoin Cash” with ticker BCH (which many bitcoiners prefer to call “BCash” since it is not actually bitcoin). The Bcashers had a different approach to scaling bitcoin, and despite not having the lion’s share of investor or bitcoin node support, claim to still be ‘bitcoin’. e.g. this tweet below by Ryan.

https://twitter.com/ryanxcharles/status/989259638905290752

Nick Szabo has called out Bcash for being centralised sock puppetry here:

"Bitcoin Cash" is centralized sock puppetry. https://t.co/OJJo5vwEfn

— Nick Szabo (@NickSzabo4) December 21, 2017

Oh also, Bcash has far fewer transactions than Bitcoin:

Sunday was a very "active" day for #BitcoinCash #BCH, with only 7.89 transactions pr. minute. Saturday was much better, 9.13 transactions pr. minute.#Bitcoin #BTC had 96.2 transactions pr minute on Sunday, 107.39 on Saturday.

— Sondre Bjellås (@SondreB) April 9, 2018

So anyway, one blog post by a Bcash proponent struck me as oddly attempting to justify Bcasher deception. From Derek Magill’s “Theoretical Bitcoiner” post, where he essentially tries to argue that there haven’t been that many instances of people who lost money due to Bcash proponents deceiving people:

The Theoretical Bitcoiner is the imaginary victim of Bitcoin Cash. It is used by Bitcoin Core supporters to attack the Bitcoin Cash community and technology. The argument usually goes as follows: there are some people out there, somewhere, who are being tricked into buying Bitcoin Cash or sending their Bitcoin Core to Bitcoin Cash wallets because of sites like Bitcoin.com, members of the community, and online discussions. Bitcoin Cash is bad (bcash bcash bcash).

Here’s the problem: whether or not people have actually fallen for it – your behaviour was still deceptive. e.g. the tweet by Ryan above. Or how the bitcoin.com website listed Bitcoin as BCH, instead of listing the BTC token as bitcoin.

Ignoring the counter factual (if honest bitcoiners hadn’t called out the deceptive behaviour)

Imagine if honest bitcoiners had not called out the Bcasher deception? Surely more people would have been deceived and might well have lost money.

Real lesson – if you want to make a contentious change and have everyone come along with you, first build support

Here’s the real lesson: Before forking off to create your own BCH shitcoin, do better at building consensus. This requires skills in persuasion and reasoning.

You should play the honest game of trying to win hearts and minds, and not play the dishonest game of deception.