TL;DR: Bitcoin Cash (BCH) has had more than its fair share of trials and tribulations, and we’ve made plenty of our own boneheaded blunders too. With the benefit of hindsight, one of our biggest mistakes may have been trying to convince the world that “Bitcoin Cash is Bitcoin”… or “BCH is the real Bitcoin.”

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Bitcoin Cash is for Payments

I’ve been as much a part of this folly as anyone. In fact, I wrote an article entitled 12 Reasons Bitcoin Cash is the Real Bitcoin. The problem isn’t that those reasons are invalid, but rather that this is the wrong way to persuade people to use and support Bitcoin Cash.

Marketing needs to be clear, concise, and compelling. Today, more than ever, people have short attention spans and are only swayed by big benefits that they can see and experience. Most people simply don’t care about the philosophical underpinnings of Bitcoin.

With this understanding, it shouldn’t be surprising that the old set of slogans has been ineffective. It’s turned people off from BCH who don’t necessarily have the time to understand the issues, and it’s also put us BCH supporters into difficult conversations. If I have to start by explaining the difference between “Bitcoin the ticker” and “Bitcoin the p2p cash system,” then I’ve already lost.

Here’s a different idea: Instead of trying to be “the real bitcoin”, what if we positioned BCH as “Bitcoin for payments”?

Everyone can see that BTC doesn’t work well when the fees spike. They can directly experience the erratic fees, expensive transactions, and poor service. These drawbacks are both easier to explain and more meaningful than many of the other arguments that have been attempted so far.

Here are 4 additional points that may help the conversation:

1. Simplicity

Bitcoin and crypto should be easy to use. BCH is. It’s been working for a decade. Systems with a complex user experience rarely if ever gain traction and adoption.

Offline payments

The fact the Lightning Network requires users to be online to receive payments isn’t necessarily the worst thing about LN, but it’s one of the easiest to explain. The benefit of being able to receive payments anytime is easy to grasp.

Scaling solutions work on-chain

Critics of on-chain scaling often remark that simply increasing the blocks isn’t a scaling solution. However, Bitcoin Cash is doing much more than naively increasing the blocksize. There’s a plethora of enhancements (utxo commitments, graphene, etc) that work synergistically with larger blocks.

Bitcoin Cash is here to stay

We’ve got a passionate community with a lot of talent. Our progress has been steady since the launch to achieve our mission of global p2p cash. Even in the face of adversity we continue to build what we believe in, we have a roadmap to support our goals, and we’re determined to make sure Bitcoin Cash works smoothly at scale.

In conclusion, I’m not asking you to give up your opinion that Bitcoin Cash is the best p2p electronic cash system. All I’m suggesting is this: The next time you encounter a BTC fan, the easy argument to win is that Bitcoin Cash works better for payments.

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