Bitcoin Cash is out. Litecoin is in.

Belatedly, and perhaps proving the point… we stopped accepting Bitcoin Cash at some point over the holidays and I’m only remembering to write about it now.

What prompted the decision was the Bitcoin Cash fork into Bitcoin SV and Bitcoin ABC. We were ok supporting a fork from Bitcoin Core, believing this was an example of consensus in action. But then when Bitcoin Cash itself forked, we were faced with the decision of which one of the forks to support, if at all.

Listening to Lets Talk Bitcoin #382 Is Hashpower Enough?, wherein Daniel Krawisz  zealously took the LTB crew through the why’s and how’s of Bitcoin SV, how it was technically superior in every way to ABC, how that meant the incentive structure would practically guarantee that over the long term SV would win out, not just across the rival Bitcoin Cash chains, but across the entire crypto space. Krawisz is seemingly a Bitcoin SV maximalist. That’s why it’s named for “Satoshi’s Vision”, and that’s why it will eventually be the one crypto to rule them all.

Or not. One thing I do find about crypto engineers and developers is that they are so technologically intelligent they unfailingly violate one of the most core business maxims in existence: Don’t think like a fisherman, think like a fish.

I don’t know enough about crypto to say if SV is better than ABC. But I do know that technological superiority is not the sole factor that dictates market acceptance. If it were, we would have had Beta, not VHS. All servers would be *nix servers, there would be no NT, anywhere. Microsoft would not exist. BeOS would still be a thing.

In other words. It doesn’t matter if your blockchain is the absolute best blockchain ever. What really matters is whether people who possess a mere fraction of the brainpower of the typical blockchain programmer, (people, like me) can wrap their head around it and find it usable. If they can’t, your product or your blockchain or whatever, at the very least will not attain market ubiquity and may actually experience market failure.

When it comes to crypto, specifically, forks induce confusion. As celeb VC Rick Segal used to frequently tell me: “Choice, equals confusion, equals inaction”, or in this case, it dissuades usage. The takeaway for crypto projects is that beyond a certain point, subsequent forks will cause more damage to both blockchains than any perceived victory that one can garner over the other.

Microcosm of the phenomenon subsequently ensued within our MM:

In the conversation below, I’m “PHB”, the Pointy-Haired-Boss who doesn’t know anything, and DEV are the guys who actually program everything here:

PHB: Did you guys hear Bitcoin Cash is, or may have already, forked?

DEV: What? Really? Wasn’t that a fork to begin with? What was that, like 6 months?

PHB: Yeah something like that, I haven’t been paying attention. Anybody ever pay us in BCH?

DEV: Some. It’s still BTC above all with ETH in second place.

PHB: So anyway, now there’s Bitcoin Cash SV and Bitcoin Cash ABC.

DEV: So which one are we going with boss?

PHB: The fsck should I know? How long would it take for you guys to look into it, figure out which one is the way to go?

DEV: Maybe a day, or two, we could ask around. Then we’d have to make any mods to the code base.

PHB: You guys have anything better to do?

DEV: Yeah, lots.

PHB: Ok, the hell with it. Just drop it.

DEV: No problem. We could replace it with something else. Litecoin maybe?

PHB: I’ve heard of litecoin. How long would that take?

DEV: About 10 minutes.

PHB: Do it.

And that, my friends, is how decisions about crypto get made by people who are not living and breathing crypto. It’s pretty horrific, but if you want your crypto project to gain traction in the outside world, this is the kind of mindset you’re dealing with.

Now accepting Litecoin

And with that switch, we are now, once again, the first and only ICANN accredited registrar, in the world, that accepts Litecoin.