Long-run favors BTC over BCH, here's why...

Long-run favors BTC over BCH, here's why...
/u/fortunative

There are many reasons why BTC will remain the gold standard and not BCH.

BTC Advantages over BCH:

A deep pool of very talented set of developers who have deep knowledge in the critical technologies that underpin Bitcoin: cryptography, peer-to-peer communication, game theory, protocol development, and very importantly, security
An unparalleled track record for releasing well-tested and secure code (the recent Parity-eth scandal shows just how bad even one small bug can be)
Has an ethos that tries to minimize centralization pressures of all kinds, mining, client, and providers. This includes trying to ensure upgrades are backwards compatible. For people who use alternate implementations of Bitcoin other than Bitcoin Core, or who customize the client, this is critical. One small example: Greg Maxwell noted that users and alternate clients "may have their own lengthy patching and qualification process". When those aren't taken into account, "forced upgrades erode decentralization and privileges hosted wallets/apis/pools over running your own infrastructu re"
BTC has a censorship resistance ethos that is critical to ensuring that no one party controls the coin (one of the key attributes that makes Bitcoin special). Even the CEO of Xapo, who was a Segwit2X signer recently acknowledged he got a bit too eager with his support of a fork and that censorship resistance is critical.
Has a large ecosystem working on scaling solutions. Some on-chain (like segwit, MAST), and others on the way that may also improve privacy such as Schnorr. Many competing groups are also working on second layer solutions like lightning or drivechains/sidechains. Just this week there was a new whitepaper on more ways to do funding of micropayment channels that might make lightning even better. There is an incredible amount of spectacular science and research going on here
Has a deep, thriving ecosystem of developers, wallets, c ompanies, and users committed to it's success and development
A wide deployment of different clients, libraries, and supporting systems
Makes it a bit harder to skip proof of work in a covert way with ASICBoost
Significant performance improvements and rapid ongoing development and research
Strong network effects
BTC transaction volume, people actually using the coin is literally 25X times higher than BCH! The little volume in BCH is most likely speculative since virtually no one accepts it.

BCH has:

Heavy influence from one mining group that pushed for it and most likely funded it. This is the same mining group that held back segwit (a scaling upgrade, security improvement, and bugfix for malleability). This was done against the wishes of nearly every Bitcoin engineer (even former engineer Gavin Andresen supported Segwit)
Only 1 full-time developer, Amaury Sechet (deadalnix). When someone asked him at a recent conference to list other people who work on it, his only response was "freetrader". That doesn't exactly inspire confidence since the entire foundation of Bitcoin is the code.
Almost no track record yet for releases or security
Potential scaling problems: If blocks started to actually fill up many users would not be able to run a full node because the costs of bandwidth and also storage would become problematic since bandwidth requirements increase at a much faster rate than the block size. This would make those users subject to people or large organizations who want to manipulate the coin since only large players and miners may be able to run full nodes as the costs rise.
An ideology that favors putting the costs onto full nodes despite no compensation; economists call this "cost externalization" and can lead to a break-down of the incentives known as "tragedy of the commons"
No track record on how disputes between developers are resolved or when something is production ready, no diverse set of developer testing
A fledgling set of clients and apps, almost nothing compared to BTC
A distribution schedule that means faster inflation and more coins, and also, a far lower period of time before new coin creation comes to a halt entirely. This combined with the idea of trying to keep transaction fees to a minimum means the future security and viability of the coin is much less certain than BTC
A likely exploitation by miners of covert ASICBoost, skipping some proof of work but only for privileged miners covered by a patent
Lack of acceptance in the marketplace. Some exchanges support it, but it lacks the critical mass of retailers and people that accept it (the network effects of existing BTC works against this coin)
Low transaction volume (roughly 80 transactions per second compared to Bitcoin's 215 0 per second.
High likelihood of a price crash once some exchanges like Coinbase/GDAX free up coins and users can sell them

I have been watching Bitcoin for a long time, and the main thing I've learned is don't overreact to flashes in the pan, weak hands, and anytime a "panic" is happening. What really pays in the long-run is sticking with things that have a proven track record, a high quality set of software engineers and computer scientists, and a critical mass of ecosystem. Nothing compares to Bitcoin in these regards!!

Bitcoin has a very bright future ahead!

submitted by /u/fortunative
[link] [comments]