Now, you might be a little confused. So you click “Start Here.” When you do, here’s what you would see:

Bitcoin.com “Start Here” screen (Feb 4, 2018)

The website promises to teach you the fundamentals of “Bitcoin” — but below, it’s got articles with titles like “Buy Bitcoin Cash with a credit card”, “What is Bitcoin Cash?” and, crucially, “Bitcoin Cash Compared to Bitcoin Core”.

Now you’re maybe wondering: what the heck is Bitcoin Core?

The top of the page says “Buy Bitcoin,” “Use Bitcoin,” “Play Games with Bitcoin” — but there’s no mention of a digital asset called Bitcoin Core. That’s because Bitcoin (BTC) is Bitcoin. There is no currency or digital asset called Bitcoin Core. Bitcoin Core is the name of software you can run on your computer to keep the Bitcoin network running — but it’s not the name of a digital asset.

To be clear: There is only one Bitcoin (BTC), and then there are hardforks like Bitcoin Gold, Bitcoin Cash, Bitcoin Private. There is no digital asset you can buy called Bitcoin Core.

The whole reason BCH must add the word “Cash” after Bitcoin is to show that it is a FORK of Bitcoin, one of many Bitcoin Forks — including Bitcoin Gold, Bitcoin Private, Bitcoin Rhodium, and so on, that have split off during Bitcoin’s history. No other fork pretends to be Bitcoin. Only Bitcoin Cash is committed to the project of trying to trick people into thinking it is Bitcoin.

…But let’s say, even after all this, you still want to proceed with buying Bitcoin. So you download a “Wallet” from Bitcoin.com, since Bitcoin.com advertises that as the “easiest way to use and store Bitcoin”:

Bitcoin.com Wallet (Feb 4, 2018)

If you install and open the Bitcoin.com Wallet, you’ll find that the wallet gives no option for using and storing Bitcoin! Instead, it has two wallets: one for “Bitcoin Cash” and the other for “Bitcoin Core”!

Bitcoin Cash even made its logo the same color as Bitcoin, just with a reversed angle of the “B”. Think consumers are going to have an easy time telling the difference?

Look, I understand that no one knows who invented Bitcoin and as a result no one has brought a trademark consumer confusion claim. But c’mon — if a new consumer just getting started in this space wanted to buy Bitcoin, how sure are you that they could pull it off here? How could they tell which is which?

The big problem here is that when a consumer inevitably gets scammed — when they try to buy some Bitcoin Cash thinking they were getting Bitcoin — how do you think they’re going to feel? Are they likely to stay and keep investing in the digital asset space? I doubt it. I bet that person is going to feel like they got scammed and never invest in digital assets again. And that is a terrible thing for a young industry to endorse.

2. Using r/BTC to trick consumers into buying BCH: If you want to read about Bitcoin on reddit, the proper subreddit (forum) is r/Bitcoin. But let’s say you didn’t know that, and you just wanted to guess. You might try typing r/BTC, since BTC is the abbreviation for Bitcoin. When you got there, you’d think you were in the right place, since everything is referring to Bitcoin:

The front page of www.reddit.com/r/btc (Feb 4, 2018)

…but that’s a lie. This subreddit isn’t dedicated to Bitcoin (BTC) — it’s about Bitcoin Cash (BCH), but it’s using the BTC to confuse consumers on purpose. For example, r/BTC’s sidebar links you to a place where you can download a “Bitcoin Full Node”. If you follow that link, here’s what will come up:

BitcoinABC.org, which r/BTC says is a “Bitcoin Full Node” (Feb 4, 2018)

That’s NOT Bitcoin (BTC) software — that’s software for Bitcoin Cash (BCH), that you downloaded from r/BTC. If you run that, you won’t be joining the Bitcoin network — you’re joining the Bitcoin Cash network, which is another protocol entirely. The entire r/BTC subreddit is full of misdirection like that, and my guess is they’ll continue to keep scamming people until enough people speak up. When I first started reading about Bitcoin on Reddit, I thought r/Bitcoin and r/BTC were two sites about the same thing. I bet lots of people do too, which is why this is so scammy. I bet you can guess the first website r/BTC recommends: Bitcoin.com.

r/BTC “Bitcoin Links”, from the forum’s sidebar (Feb 4, 2018)

r/BTC is being used to trick people into buying and running BCH. That’s the kind of scammy product that Coinbase should be fighting, not selling.

3. On Twitter, using @Bitcoin, with Bitcoin’s Logo, to trick people into buying Bitcoin Cash: On Twitter, the scamming story is the same. Bitcoin Cash proponents bought or own the @Bitcoin handle, and use that with the Bitcoin logo in order to trick people into buying Bitcoin cash. The Twitter account constantly pushes content that is negative on Bitcoin and positive towards Bitcoin Cash, including insisting that Bitcoin Cash is “The Real Bitcoin” and frequently linking to Bitcoin.com. Since the @Bitcoin profile picture is Bitcoin’s logo — not Bitcoin Cash’s —it makes its scamming for Bitcoin Cash even more confusing for new users.

@Bitcoin Twitter profile page (Feb 4, 2018)

Even worse, this scam might be most effective on people with less money: purchasing 1 BCH is approximately 90% cheaper than purchasing 1 Bitcoin, since BCH lacks the developer talent and community support that made Bitcoin this successful this far. For a wealthy person, BTC’s price premium might be seen as a plus. For someone without a lot of money, BCH’s low price might seem like a really good deal for Bitcoin. But it’s not Bitcoin — they just got scammed.

There are way more examples than these, but I’ll stop there, hoping I’ve sufficiently shown you that people behind Bitcoin Cash are clearly trying to trick people interested in Bitcoin (BTC) into purchasing Bitcoin Cash (BCH).