The last couple of weeks have been full of very passionate discussion and the occasional hilarity. The level of propaganda, conspiracies, and accusations makes it very hard to bear social media. My initial reaction was to pull back and avoid all that aggression, even if not directed at me. But there are several inspiring and lucid people that manage to stay above of the noise, which are reinvigorating. Trying to imitate those, I wondered

In all this discussion about who's right and wrong, what obvious are we missing?

Then it occurred to me that businesses are being considered collateral damage of a righteous hash war, if they choose the wrong side. As Satoshi intended!

Taking sides

Consider the question:

As a business, how should I upgrade my systems in order to keep a continued service for my customers?

If the answer to this question is "Take a side!" then that's a complete failure, in my opinion. Taking the wrong side, the one that has less hashpower and is most disrupted, affects everyone negatively. It affects the willingness to continue operating with Bitcoin Cash, the receptiveness of new businesses to start using Bitcoin Cash, the perceived utility of the currency, and the overall confidence on the system and that this wont happen again.

Wait it out

The second typical answer is "Just wait it out! A couple of hours should be enough to show who is the winner". This answer is even worse as you ensure disruption with almost the same risk or double the costs.

I though one of the marketing lines for Bitcoin Cash was "reliable, open every day, 100% uptime". If businesses suspend payments for 1 hour, two times a year, that gives us 99.98% uptime which is mediocre uptime nowadays.

Dedicating energy to what you're good at

Specialization is a good thing. If people concentrate in what they are good at, better results can be achieved. Businesses are good at doing business and selling something customers want. Managing upgrades in the Bitcoin Cash network is a distraction.

Some meaningful questions are being left unanswered. And as the network grows more of those simple “I just want to do my thing, not the history of Bitcoin, please” kind of questions will appear.

If we don't want to have a single client, a benevolent dictator of the specification, or hash wars then something must change in current scheduled upgrade system.