TL;DR: It really is strange. BTC remains the world’s most popular cryptocurrency by every metric. The enviable status of its network effect alone makes the coin basically peerless. Yet its most vocal proponents, BTC maximalists (maxis), insist upon constantly attacking Bitcoin Cash (BCH), a mid-2017 fork attempting to reclaim Bitcoin as a peer-to-peer electronic cash system.

BTC Maximalist Doom & Gloom Bitcoin Cash Narrative Reaches Fever Pitch

Let us wager. In roughly a month, when Bitcoin Cash upgrades as scheduled on May 15, 2020, a flurry of BTC maximalists will take to social media, proclaiming, once again, BCH is dead. Done. Over. Bcash. Btrash. Scamcoin. It’s a ritual maxis now engage twice a year at least in conjunction with upgrades or any time BCH reaches a milestone. Dutifully, most of the cryptocurrency press follows along, publishing BCH obituaries filled with data points. That’s the pattern for going on three years.

And so when Bitcoin Cash was to halve its block reward recently, a first for the most successful fork of BTC, dropping the inflation rate from 12.5 BCH for miners to 6.25 BCH, a full month ahead of its parent project, out the maxis strode. To literate analysts, the BCH halving was to be a non-event, a nothing burger, as most such instances have for nearly every coin. Sure, there’s a flurry of speculative price pumps leading up to the block height, but, over time, they’ve proven to be less than worthy of much consideration.

From all indications, that was to be the same for Bitcoin Cash. Notable BCH influencers such as Roger Ver predicted as much. For the peer-to-peer electronic cash community, it was a kind of rallying point, a chance to take a look at the past few years and what might lay ahead. But no one of any note in BCH claimed moon pricing was ahead. In fact, there’s been a healthy amount of debate on uncensored forums like r/btc about what the Bitcoin Cash halving would translate into, short term, with regard to a halving ahead of BTC.

Maxi Roger Ver Obsession

First, BTC maximalists claimed no one cared about the BCH halving. Who cares! Then, rather quickly, the narrative shifted toward their favorite target, Bitcoin.com Executive Chairman, Roger Ver. Maxis pounced on Ver’s company’s mining pool, insisting he and it stopped pointing hash to BCH altogether. When that failed to materialize, maxis weaved the story into Ver and Bitcoin.com slowly moving away from Bitcoin Cash, mining-wise.

Love Ver, hate him, or simply tolerate him, he’s hardly inaccessible. The dude lives and breathes online, grants interviews to every lonely basement blogger in the universe. All any of these supposed crypto news outlets had to do was ask Ver directly. No special invitation needed. No gaggle of handlers to sift through. He is, again, famously easy to ask substantive questions of … on Reddit, Telegram, and email to name just a few platforms.

Nope. It was easier to show confusing mining pie charts, jumble his possibly being the CEO of BTC.com mining pool (he’s not), and insist something is afoot with Ver and Bitcoin Cash. Listen. Say what you want, but Ver has literally put all of his time and effort since 2017 into BCH and its promotion. He’s not hiding. So, CoinSpice did the seemingly impossible. We emailed Roger Ver about his dastardly BCH mining plans.

It Gets Weirder

“We haven’t changed anything with our system that chooses which coin to mine,” Ver told CoinSpice. “I’m more bullish on the future of BCH than ever before,” he stressed. And if Bitcoin.com did point some of its hash toward BTC, what of it? They use the same algorithm and it might be smart to send some of that hash over to BTC for a spell until things flatten back out. We can guess Ver might even say he’d SideShift.ai those BTC for BCH in the meantime (for the record, he said nothing of the kind).

Shortly after, an anonymous space cat Twitter BTC maxi personality (@hodlonaut) posted a butchered animal, cleaned and dismembered, referencing Ver and apparently his support of forking away from BTC to Bitcoin Cash (see above). Mind you, had Ver offered anything of the sort about a BTC maxi influencer, all hell would’ve broken loose. You can write the headlines yourself: Bcash’s Ver Threatens Murder of Bitcoin Enthusiast. Maxis have jumped on Ver for far less.

Instead, @hodlonaut, after assuring followers no one so much as even thinks about Bitcoin Cash, continued posting for days on the subject. The account got so ahead of its skis, @hodlonaut tweeted a hilarious self-own (a BTC maxi pastime) by claiming it costs millions and millions to keep BCH afloat after the halving. CoinSpice’s own Collin Enstad took @hodlonaut apart during a live stream recently over the issue, and it’s well worth watching (embedded below). Not only does @hodlonaut get the math wrong, the anon space cat fails to understand the basics of BCH’s difficulty adjustment algorithm (DAA).

The Never-Ending 51% Attack Just Around the Corner

The DAA and resulting oscillations and gaming is something the Bitcoin Cash community is well-aware of, and an aspect of mining CoinSpice has covered many times. Mining efficiency is such an important topic in the community it made its way into the recent Bitcoin ABC budget proposal. It doesn’t take very long to grasp how enthusiasts are contending with mining and its future. It’s all out in the open.

Other crypto news outlets used the BCH halving to warn of the never-ending charge, the vaunted 51% attack seemingly always around the corner for Bitcoin Cash. This is, without a doubt, the go-to card played over and over again. Various BTC maxi charts and graphs were cited as “proving” BCH could be 51% attacked, the network over-taken complete with double-spends galore.

Again, the 51% attack has been a BTC maximalist fever dream since mid-2017 and before. They knew it would happen, just a matter of time. A BTC maxi YouTube show recently attempted yet another shot at what they’re sure will happen. It too is worth watching if only to demonstrate how silly the arguments get. The featured maxi, Juan Galt, twists and tangles himself into explaining how Bitcoin Cash will be overrun for the price of just one BTC. Heck, the financial wizard even tells viewers how to short BCH to make incredible gains.

We’ve heard it now for three years. It never happens. If it’s so easy, so matter-of-fact, then do it. Let’s see. And that’s really the proof after the hype and strange propaganda: nothing comes of their dire predictions. Bitcoin Cash pushes forward. Its community remains hyper-focused on peer-to-peer electronic cash for the world, securing more financial privacy, and offering an alternative to the Number Go Up Moon Bois digital gold crowd. Meanwhile, BTC maxis bored with staring at CoinMarketCap all day chirp and hector Bitcoin Cash enthusiasts, bluster and make fools of themselves … only to quiet for a while and then return at the next upgrade. See you in May.

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DISCLOSURE: The author holds cryptocurrency as part of his financial portfolio, including BCH.