The question in the title is misleading. Because what Core think, and what Core and Blockstream want you to think and believe, are two entirely separate things.

Recently Bitcoin Core developer Luke Dashjr (aka Luke-jr) wrote an opinion piece almost entirely about “Bitcoin Cash” itself.

But before we get onto the Bitcoin Cash topic here, let me address one glaring point made by Luke early on in his piece. Given that Segwit2x is well underway now, Luke actually makes an admission – stating, and I quote “Basically, BIP148 (UASF) was an early success”. This statement conclusively reaffirms statements I made in an earlier piece that Blockstream (UASF) and DCG ( Segwit2x) are in bed together. And I’m going to restate this – big blockers have been played.

But Luke’s ponderous post is genuinely a marvel in deceit. He bewilderingly states that “Bitcoin Cash” is an altcoin, and that it is an attempt to hijack Bitcoin.

This play on words is all too common within the Blockstream camp. The hijacking came from Blockstream and no one else. But to help illustrate this point, allow me to paint this picture. Suppose you are part of an open source project. You release a founding paper specifying your project’s inner workings, methods, and overall operation. Your project is unfunded, but passionately developed within an open, transparent, thriving community. A new company emerges, and cleverly makes its way among your development team, and receives an incredibly large amount of funding from some very big players in the industry. This company then starts to weed out some of the early developers of the project, and particularly those who don’t agree with the company’s very distinct vision.

Discussion and promotion of the original founding paper is prohibited. This company then (for argument sake let’s just call it Blockstream) rewrites the project to a vision that is incompatible with its original founding paper. So then in retaliation a small group of people, some who were there in the beginning, come together, and re-launch or rather see the continuation of the original project with the original intention, following the original founding paper.

Who in the above paradigm hijacked the project? Unless you are heavily compromised, it takes no genius to figure out the answer. Blockstream took over Bitcoin, fundamentally changed its course direction, and are now actively attacking the minority who wish to retain the original vision.

Bitcoin’s community has been aggressively split for several years now. If Luke’s heart was in the right place, he should genuinely wish Bitcoin Cash all the best, and in fact thank them for going their own way, and finally ending years of dispute. Instead he chooses to attack further.

Segregated Witness is an extreme departure from the Bitcoin described in inventor, and creator, Satoshi Nakamoto’s white paper.

Satoshi in his wisdom wrote “Bitcoin can already scale much larger than [VISA] with existing hardware for a fraction of the cost.” Bitcoin was already scaleable, it didn’t need Segwit. The threat “Bitcoin Cash” poses is that it can finally prove itself, with the removal of the 1MB temporary cap it will demonstrate to the world that Core devs were lying all along, and Bitcoin can scale to astronomical heights, and operate very efficiently and securely.

So now the new agenda by Core and Blockstream is to attack “Bitcoin Cash” as an altcoin, and to discredit its position as the true Bitcoin. But anyone reading Satoshi’s whitepaper and other writings will instantly recognise that ‘Bitcoin Cash’ is indeed the coin the inventor and creator desired. But this isn’t about doing it for ‘Satoshi’. It is about recognising that there was nothing ever wrong with the original roadmap for Bitcoin. The derailment by Blockstream into Segwit isn’t for Bitcoin’s benefit, it is actually for the benefit of Blockstream and its many investors.

Luke also stated that “this isn’t a particularly unique or even first-of-kind altcoin: “Bitcoin Dark” and “Bitcoin Plus” have tried to hijack the “Bitcoin” name previously”.

Again, he mentions the term ‘hijacking’. This isn’t hijacking anything. If Blockstream chooses to fundamentally change the inner workings of Bitcoin, and a group of loyalists who truly believe in Bitcoin’s capability in its current form with the transaction cap removed choose to keep things as they are – why should it not be called Bitcoin? Bitcoin Cash is true Bitcoin in every sense of the word, and is 100% aligned to the whitepaper description.

Luke’s stated “Bitcoin Plus” and “Bitcoin Dark” are both non-compliant to Bitcoin’s whitepaper, and further they did not maintain Bitcoin’s existing ledger as they were not forks of the main chain. Luke’s inclusion of these two cryptos is intentionally misleading.

Segwit on the other hand is so much so a departure from Bitcoin’s whitepaper that if you would determine altcoins on technicalities alone, Segwit would be it, hands down. Where does the white paper mention splitting witness data?

Why should a central body, such as Blockstream, have the final say as to what Bitcoin is and isn’t. Bitcoin Cash’s value and status will in the end be determined by the free and open market, not by the rantings of a Core developer.

Eli Afram

@justicemate

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