Roger Ver has hit back at claims Bitcoin Cash has just seven core developers, that it’s cash strapped and on the brink of collapse.

The FUD has grown strong around Bitcoin Cash this week with the Bitcoin fork’s financial and personnel woes highlighted amid warnings it could “cease to exist”.

Leaked Telegram messages suggest the BCH dev team has just six or seven core members who are struggling to keep up with backports from Bitcoin Core, much less do any actual development on the underlying technology.

The messages also show concern that Bitcoin Cash’s financial woes could see it “cease to exist”.

In response Bitcoin.com’s Roger Ver has labelled the claims “fake news”.

$7.4 billion Bitcoin Cash marketcap, but still needs donations

On the face of it, many might think it bizarre that a cryptocurrency with a $7.4 billion market cap would need to go cap in hand to its community to keep its head above water in the first place.

But as a decentralized entity, the dev teams working on the project don’t see that money and the large companies that profit from BCH also profit from a range of other cryptocurrencies, so they aren’t incentivized to support BCH financially.

Last year’s hash wars between Bitcoin Cash and Craig Wright’s Bitcoin SV not only tanked the entire crypto market but took a heavy financial toll on both camps, costing an estimated $14 million.

Defending related legal action is also believed to had a significant impact on the BCH team’s funds.

800 BCH fundraiser launched three weeks ago

Roger Ver’s Bitcoin.com (Bitcoin Cash’s promo arm) launched a fundraiser on May 30 seeking 800 BCH (around $350,000) in donations.

End of the road for BCH development.

Even Roger has tapped out. pic.twitter.com/ewH1QR9JiO — Skylark_BitCoin ???? (@skylark_bitcoin) June 16, 2019

Rival Bitcoin SV blog CoinGeek seized on the fundraising effort gleefully to suggest:

“Plainly, BCHABC is falling apart. Bitmain has endured massive layoffs and Jihan Wu has lost control for backing the wrong horse. Adoption has fallen off, with one wallet representing most of their transactions. Now, the development team is begging for money.”

Until just a few days ago, the fundraiser was struggling to reach even 40% of its modest goal, resulting in a wave of FUD and much gnashing of teeth on social media.

“Nobody is donating,” Openbazaar developer Chris Pacia said on Telegram. “That fundraiser probably won’t hit the goal and the goal is an order of magnitude less than what is needed.”

Bitcoin Cash community – or large benefactors – ride to the rescue

The good news is that the media coverage appears to have lit a fire under the BCH community, with a late breaking surge in donations seeing its struggling developer fund hit its target yesterday.

Either that, or as some have suggested on social media, a few large benefactors swooped in.

Bitcoin.com’s Avi Mizrahi reported yesterday: “A number of big donations to the Bitcoin Cash Development Fund have just brought the total community contribution made to the campaign very close to the 800 BCH goal.”

Weirdly enough, yesterday Bitcoin.com claimed they’d hit 95% of the fundraising goal, and community reports on Reddit suggested 125%, however the site today suggests its at 87.7%. (They may be collating other fundraisers into the total).

The money collected in this fundraiser will be donated in full to the development teams of Bitcoin ABC, Bitcoin Unlimited, BCHD, and Bcash to keep working on advancing the technological infrastructure of the cryptocurrency.

Ver hits back at ‘collapse’ claims

Bitcoin.com’s Roger Ver hit back at claims BCH is on the brink of collapse and a dev coup is under way calling it ‘fake news’

He told Cryptonews.com in a statement that Bitcoin.com has, “nearly a hundred people all working on Bitcoin Cash including protocol development.”

“Just this month alone we have raised over USD 300K or nearly 800 BCH for Bitcoin Cash protocol work.”

Nearly 100 people but most aren’t devs

That seems slightly disingenuous however as Bitcoin.com only lists 11 people with ‘developer’ in their titles, and a number of those are web developers.

Ver’s claims contrast sharply with Pacia who said on Telegram that Bitcoin Cash was heavily reliant on just a small number of core members.

BCH on the brink of collapse, dev coup on the way. pic.twitter.com/AEc0m8toFi — winterwishin (@winterwishin) June 16, 2019

“I don’t think you guys realize how much BCH only exists because the efforts of a handful of a people on a shoestring budget.

“We’ve got maybe 6 or 7 people doing 100% of the development work. And that’s barely enough bodies to just keep up with backports for Core let alone do any actual work on BCH.

“If those 6 or 7 people got fed up and walked away BCH would flat out tank. Easily drop out of the top 20 and would basically be a dead project.”

With the recent FB announcement BCH could fail unless we learn from this and use what we learn in time. The window to act is closing so we need to step up. Join me as I do everything in my power to make Bitcoin Cash the Peer to Peer electronic cash we all say we believe in. — deadalǹ͔͜͡i͎̜͖͗̎͞x̛̳̠̤̥̦̉̊̕̕ (@deadalnix) June 15, 2019

Bitcoin Cash lead dev worried about Facebook’s Libra

Former Facebook employee, and current lead developer of Bitcoin Cash, Amaury Sechet, took to Twitter over the weekend to suggest that Facebook’s cryptocurrency project could be the reason why Bitcoin Cash could eventually fail.

“With the recent FB announcement BCH could fail unless we learn from this and use what we learn in time. The window to act is closing so we need to step up’,” he tweeted.

The reactions from the BCH community suggest they don’t think this is likely and that BCH has a strong future.

Amaury Sechet went further telling Trustnodes: “We can go on with what we have, but we can’t do the required work to make world money happen. We haven’t been able to do any serious work for the past 2 years, mostly low hanging fruits.”

“We need to be hiring more people, and that requires money, but it’s only one part of the equation. The second part is more of a cultural shift. We need to project that we want 10x people and that we’ll treat them well.

*Want to play a Bitcoin Cash treasure hunt to find hidden BCH near you? Click here.