Bitcoin Gold (BTG), another forked coin bearing the Bitcoin name is set to take place on October 25. Is it a good thing for the already divided Bitcoin family to have a new member? In this series, Jack Liao, CEO of Hong Kong mining firm LightningAsic talks about how they want to protect Bitcoin by competing with Bitcoin Cash (BCH in short) and increase mining decentralization.

You criticized BCC that they broke the consensus mechanism. No offense, but I don’t think the community voted to have a forked-coin called BTG.

The Bitcoin community has been sticking to the consensus mechanism and scaling solutions cannot be deployed without broad consensus. But this summer Bitmain chose to hard fork Bitcoin without showing any respect to the consensus principle. If the BCH team could do this, then I suppose as part of the ecosystem, we also have the right to upgrade the Bitcoin protocol based on our understanding of Bitcoin to promote the further prosperity of the Bitcoin ecosystem.

What do you think of the fact that Bitcoin’s transaction fees are getting higher and some people think it’s unfair of Bitcoin’s transaction fee structure?

Do you want to fly first class? You honestly expect an economy class seat to be as comfortable as a first class seat? It’s natural to pay more for better services. This is a result of market competition. Now with the activation of Segwit, Bitcoin is not as congested as before. And I believe when new technical features such as lighting network and smart contract be added, we will take one step closer to almost-zero transaction fees. This is what big blockers can never achieve.

BCH is said to have five development teams, what about BTG?

BTG now has one development team. The anonymous lead developer goes by the name H4x3rotab, and several other developers and contributors can be found inside the project’s GitHub project and slack channel.

Why you are so sure that BCH cannot solve the congestion problem in the long run? All the technical features you mentioned could also be added by BCH. I remember when BCH came out, Jiang Zhuoer posted an article saying the team might also include LN, smart contract and other possible technical features.

Bullshit. What Jiang zhuoer and Bitmain said are sheer political. The beauty of Segwit is that it makes it easier to deploy LN and smart contract. And the BCH team will never be able to achieve LN if Segwit is not activated. They are too weak to do that.

Why choose to fork before the possible Segwit2X split?

The BTG team aims to protect the Bitcoin ecosystem. We adopt a different mining algorithm that is resistant to ASIC chips called Equihash. We compete with the Jihan team to see which fork coin will succeed in the end. Honestly, I think the BCH team is very short-sighted and BCH will die several months later as a result of losing hashrate in the fight with Bitcoin and Bitcoin2X. As for BTG, we will upgrade our code and technical features to better service the community and distinguish ourselves from Bitcoin and other coins.

Anyway, the born of BCH helped the community break free from the propaganda that hard fork is dangerous. But now some community members worry that the status quo of “whenever you disagree with each other, you solve it by fork.” will kill bitcoin by leading to brand fight and making the legacy chain unstable. What do you think of it?

Big blockers always argue that “let the market decide”. But the truth is that they manipulate BCH price to mislead users. They say that “after the fork, each side will just focus on their development and everyone will be happy”, but they bask in the glory of Bitcoin and try to steal the brand of Bitcoin. The BTG team will not do the same. Instead, we work to explore the core values of Bitcoin and expect great progress.

BCH has the first mover advantage as a forked-coin. It has gained support of several wallets and exchanges and applications. What will BTG do to compete with it?

I don’t think BCH has the first mover advantage. There are plenty of exchanges, mining pools and miners are willing to support us. About four or five exchanges will list BTG. Some small exchanges already announced to trade BTG. And the team is working to develop hardware wallets to support BTG.

In its infant stage, BCH has many unstable factors concerning block generation, hashrate and the emergency difficulty adjustment mechanism. What will BTG do to avoid such problems?

It’s meaningless that Bitmain squanders money to support BCH. I don’t think Bitmain is big enough to maintain a forked coin with such a large market capitalization. They set the EDA mechanism in hopes of miners would stick to the BCH chain, but only to find that more problems are caused. The community will gradually lose heart in it.

Adam Back is very supportive of BTG. And Google shows that BTG has been drawing more attention since the end of September till now. But BCH seems to lose traction. Is the BTG team doing more on marketing?

You are right. Adam says that he’d rather support BTG than Bitcoin2X. Some independent third-party agencies created polls and results showed that BTG gets more support than BCH and Bitcoin2X. Bitcoiners discuss BTG on Reddit and slack groups and realize that the roadmap of BTG is feasible and good for the community. As time goes on, we will be able to gain more attention.

I know some friends who appreciate the efforts of the BTG team trying to increase mining decentralization. But they don’t like the idea of a premine.

The whole cryptocurrency community is filled with greed and selfishness. Mining pools charge 4%-5% of transaction fees and they don’t have a problem with that. What’s wrong with us having a premine of 200,000 BTG to raise money for the development? To those who have a problem with the premine of BTG: mine or fuck off.

The Bitcoin community is growing more robust and complete with wallets, miners, conferences and media over the years. Do you think there will be some other Bitcoin business opportunities?

No. Just keep attracting new users.

What do you think of Bitcoin Gold? Which forked-coin will survive, BCH, BTG or B2X?