Exclusive Interview with Bitcoin Jesus: Fork Wars Cost the Entire Cryptocurrency Ecosystem
Author | Lu Xiaoming, Huang Xuejiao
Who cares most about the future of BCH?
If the first one is Bitcoin Continental, which holds millions of BCH, the second one is Roger Ver, known as "Bitcoin Jesus".
Roger Ver was an early investor and evangelist of Bitcoin, but he got out of the car in 2017 and turned to BCH, which has faster transaction speed, lower handling fee and is more "people-friendly".
What kind of support law? It is rumored in the rivers and lakes that he, like Wu Jihan, sold most of the BTC to buy BCH. In addition, he also used 1 million US dollars to bet with others that BCH would not be short-lived.
In May and June when the route dispute first appeared on BCH, Roger Ver also tended to support the CSW side. But after the BCH community held a consultation meeting in Bangkok in September, Roger turned to Bitmain.
Liu Changyong, director of the Blockchain Economic Research Center of Chongqing Technology and Business University (also a supporter of ABC), once told Odaily, "Bitmain's most important gain in the Bangkok conference when it tried to reconcile with CSW was Roger."
It can be seen that Roger Ver played a pivotal role in the computing power war after the BCH fork.
On the eve of the computing power war, its mining pool Bitcoin.com gradually switched the computing power of the BTC mining pool to BCH, which increased the computing power of the ABC chain by 4081.03 PH/S.
"This number is equivalent to the total computing power of the entire BCH network on the 15th." Therefore, the ABC chain has an advantage at the beginning of the "war".
Today, the computing power battle between BTC ABC and BTC SV is still stalemate. Although the computing power of the CSW side is often poor, it has not given up its "heart to seize the position". In this context, Odaily exclusively interviewed Roger Ver, and talked with him about his investment in the BCH fork and his original intention...
The following is the full text of the conversation:
The following is the full text of the conversation:
Odaily：You used to support CSW, why did you switch to ABC? We know from your twitter that this may be because you don’t like CSW, but is there any factor that the two camps have different routes?
Roger: CSW has left a long list of unfulfilled promises to the community. Let me show you this article, which has been introduced. (The article that Roger recommended us to read was an article by Electron Cash wallet developer Jonald Fyookball, "Bitcoin Cash is Finally Free of “Faketoshi”! Great Days Lie Ahead”. In the article, Jonald Fyookball listed several major problems of CSW: Not only did CSW fail to come up with key evidence that he was "Satoshi Nakamoto", he also forged a series of blog posts, emails, and contracts, as well as public keys and PGP keys; lack of technical ability; academic misconduct; and bootstrap BCH Members, launch a computing power war to destroy the community.)
Odaily ：What happened when you finally decided to back BCH ABC with bitcoin.com’s hashrate? Did you foresee this happening? Why did you choose to do it this way?
Roger：As the CEO of Bitcoin.com and a holder of BCH, it is my job to support the best path for BCH to become the world's currency, and the ABC team and roadmap are clearly more likely to achieve these goals. The SV team delivered almost nothing usable to the ecosystem.
Odaily ：You said "no one can win this computing power war, it's just who loses less than others". So, what do you have to lose in this war? What about CSW, Wu Jihan and the BCH community? Which side do you think has more to lose?
Roger：Everyone lost a lot, the entire cryptocurrency ecosystem suffered. Everyone could have used the time, energy, and money of this bear market to build tools that are useful to the world, but it ended up being spent arguing with each other. Due to all these factors, the economic growth rate of the entire cryptosphere has slowed down slightly.
Odaily ：Before the war, V God said that hard fork is good, because in this way the BCH community can get rid of CSW. However, after the war, some people said that this war reflected the over-centralization of BCH or POW, because these companies can control or even destroy a public chain. What do you think of this statement? Do you think things are better or worse now than before?
Roger：A chain is of little value if it can be easily interrupted or broken. It is best to discover this before the chain becomes popular and widely used.
Odaily : What do you think is the best way to handle the dispute? If you could turn back time, would you let this war start?
Roger：When there is a dispute, there should be more communication, not less communication. The BTC camp took the opposite approach and started censoring anyone who disagreed. To this day, the BCH community still welcomes free and open discussion, as shown on /r/BTC, which is very different from the heavily censored /r/Bitcoin.
Odaily ：Regarding BCH, what do you plan to do in the next stage?
Roger：We are adding strong privacy protections to the BCH and Bitcoin.com wallets.
Odaily : How important is the attitude of the two sides to the war? Some exchanges have delisted BCH and listed BCH ABC and BCH SV, which means that they believe that BCH has been split in two and no longer exists. Which do you think is BCH?
Roger：I think ABC is BCH and BCH is Bitcoin.
Odaily : What are your thoughts on BCH or cryptocurrencies?
Roger: I want to create peer-to-peer cash for the world, just like the title of the Bitcoin White Paper describes.
Odaily : I remember you tweeting “I started investing in Bitcoin in 2011 for the same reasons I invest in Bitcoin Cash today” and you didn’t mention decentralization, which you think is becoming the world’s Currency an important reason?
Roger：Decentralization (editor's plus: aka decentralization) is just one tool to enable peer-to-peer cash. Decentralization is not a goal in itself. This is not mentioned even once in the white paper. I don't like people who worship decentralization with religious fervor.
