The Battle for Bitcoin’s Soul
By: Will O Leary
Tags: Bitcoincash, Blockchain, Crypto, Bitcoin, Cryptocurrency

One of the many things that has fascinated me most about cryptocurrency since it started capturing all of my spare brain space is how emotionally charged it all is.

Many nocoiners and even some crypto-trading cynics use both price upswings and corrections to scornfully call it a bubble, a fraud, a scam, a stupid investment…you get the idea. From the crypto gospel end of the spectrum come shouts, snark, chest-beating, told-you-so-ing, and more during those exact same jumps and drops of coin prices.

It makes sense — belief in crypto is not simply a willingness to roll the dice on interesting technology. In my own experience, taking the plunge to work at a startup comes with a certain ability to buy in, suppress doubt, and block out the critics. This is a daily exercise and it is not for the faint of heart. Working on a crypto project, from an outsider’s point of view, is a completely different beast in terms of fealty. How so, you ask? If anyone is sitting on screenshots of Twitter fights between taxi drivers and Uber employees, I sure would love to see them, because the mere suggestion is laughable. This kind of thing is par for the course in crypto.

When you give yourself to crypto, you do it completely. Developers working on crypto projects seem to speak and act out of ideology, not mere interest. This is why words that CryptoTwitter throws around with regularity— rebel, revolutionary, pioneer, libertarian, maximalist — to describe the most passionate cryptoids invoke a special kind of imagery. The great crypto debate has heroes and villains, not simply disagreeing parties on either side of an argument.

Perhaps even more captivating are the seemingly endless skirmishes that erupt within the crypto community. Infighting among nominal allies struggling to advance a movement is nothing new, but it is amazing nonetheless to watch crypto tribes sprout and take up arms against one another.

Some of the disputes can be characterized as momentary confrontations dismissively wiped away by members of a community with no time to waste on small issues. Altcoins are routinely accused of scamming investors without much public spectacle; the crypto world keeps turning.

Others have staying power, especially those that involve rapidly ascending or popularly traded coins. Ethereum ($ETH) founder Vitalik Buterin faces daily criticism for flouting the (unofficial) First Rule of Crypto — there is no head on this snake. As the de facto leader of Ethereum, Buterin’s critics see him as the centralized antithesis of Satoshi’s original vision.

(If it wasn’t obvious, tweets from self-proclaimed Bitcoin historian Kevin Pham that reference Ethereum are best viewed as biting sarcasm.)

Kevin’s anti-Ethereum rampage has only intensified in recent days and is hardly unique among Bitcoin maximalists.

The recent rise of the Ripple ($XRP) token brought tons of hate out of the woodwork — it’s not decentralized, banks don’t really use it, the token has no value, on and on. Litecoin ($LTC) founder Charlie Lee continues to take heat for cashing out his $LTC holdings, from his view, to protect against conflicts of interest while he works on project development. These are just a few of the flare-ups that persist. New ones seem to ignite daily.

And then, topping them all, is the blood feud between Bitcoin ($BTC) and Bitcoin Cash ($BCH).