The following opinion piece on Bitcoin Cash was written by Jonald Fyookball
We’ve already discussed 3 reasons why the bitcoin project was subverted: lack of education, lack of clarity, and centralized development. Today I will proffer two more: censorship and propaganda were allowed to run rampant; miners didn’t understand their power and responsibility. Last Friday, Coingeek.com held a fantastic conference in Hong Kong on the topic of blockchain commerce. The conference concluded with a panel discussion featuring 3 of the most well-known thought leaders in the Bitcoin Cash community: Roger Ver, Dr. Craig Wright, and Jihan Wu. Each of them said something important that pertains to these topics.
Also read: How Bitcoin Cash Can Avoid the Same Mistakes as Bitcoin Core, Part 3
Bitcoin Cash Avoiding Censorship
Censorship is an obvious barrier to an educated community and is motivated by a desire to control the narrative. Thus, it goes hand-in-hand with propaganda and the active promotion of misinformation.
In Hong Kong, Roger shared that his biggest mistake was underestimating how effective censorship can be. He explained why: while established community members can easily dismiss misinformation, newcomers cannot. And since the community is a fast-growing one, the misinformed newcomers become a majority.
You can read more about the history of censorship in Bitcoin here.
Mindful Miners
In a recent “AMA”, former Bitcoin Core developer Mike Hearn pointed out that historically, BTC miners haven’t been rational economic actors. He said they’ve been incapable of disobeying the authority of the devs.
But we may be turning the corner on this. At the Coingeek conference, Bitmain CEO Jihan Wu expressed that the miners have learned from previous mistakes, and are starting to take more responsibility for understanding the protocol and making intelligent decisions.
