[kerkeslager]

> Satoshi told everyone his fork was Bitcoin and Vitalik told everyone his fork was Ethereum. The fact that more people disagreed with Vitalik than people that disagreed with Satoshi doesn't change the fact that the same thing happened in both cases: a central authority told everyone which fork was the right one.

And not everyone listened.

> At the end of the day, when consensus breaks in unforeseen circumstances-- whether through a bug or an attack (the difference is purely syntactic)--people turn to the developers to tell them which consensus ruleset to follow.

Not everyone turns to the developers.

In a decentralized system, people have the ability to disagree with the developers and literally anyone else you might name as a central authority, and have that disagreement make a meaningful difference (a fork). That's obviously significant.

> If you disagree with the developers, your chain gets called something else, as we've seen with Bitcoin Cash and Ethereum Classic.

Who cares?

When the Bitcoin fork happened, I supported the Bitcoin Cash blockchain. I don't give a crap about the name. If I get the blockchain implementation I want, you can call it whatever you want.

[hudon]

Your fork is not the same system though, everyone else considers it a different currency. The argument is whether or not 1 given currency is decentralized, not whether or not you as a human have the freedom to use any currency you want...

In other words, someone creating Bitcoin Cash doesn't somehow prove that Bitcoin is decentralized... We still need to analyze each currency individually if we're going to have any meaningful conversation about their merits.

[kerkeslager]

> Your fork is not the same system though, everyone else considers it a different currency. The argument is whether or not 1 given currency is decentralized, not whether or not you as a human have the freedom to use any currency you want...

No, everyone does not consider it a different currency, you consider it a different currency. The name changed, sure, but again, who cares? A rose by another name would smell as sweet.

Calling either BTC or BCH a different currency from the original bitcoin really just shows a lack of understanding of what a fork is. Both BTC and BCH have made changes that weren't in the original BTC.

[hudon]

> everyone does not consider it a different currency, you consider it a different currency.

Um ok we're spreading lies now. Do you have evidence that the vast majority of people consider Bitcoin Cash and Bitcoin to be the same currency and I'm alone in considering these 2 blockchains 2 different currencies?

[kerkeslager]

> Are you saying you have evidence that the vast majority of people consider Bitcoin Cash and Bitcoin to be the same currency and I'm alone in considering these 2 blockchains 2 different currencies?

No, I didn't say that.

I'm saying that neither Bitcoin nor Bitcoin Cash are identical the original Bitcoin. Both have added changes, and this will be true of any blockchain that is being actively developed. In fact, to say that Bitcoin before the fork is the same coin as Bitcoin when Satoshi made it is also a bit off, because there were changes added before the fork, too.

I'm saying that saying that considering either one of these to be different from the original Bitcoin is a moot point, because any conceptualization of being the same coin doesn't really fit. The only way you could say that any variation of Bitcoin is the same coin is by saying that they build on the same blockchain, but both BTC and BCH fit that criteria.

You've focused in on the names people call the coins, which is pretty much the least important way one could say that coins are the same--implementation is far more relevant than name.

In the end, the only thing that really makes sense to say is that modern BTC and BCH are both variants of the original Bitcoin. It doesn't really make sense to say that either is the original Bitcoin, because both have introduced changes. It also doesn't make sense to say that either isn't the original Bitcoin, because they both originate on the same blockchain. The idea you're trying to apply here, that a fork means a new coin was created and the old coin continues on, just doesn't really capture the full truth of situation.

Looking at popular opinion as if that had any relation to reality is not going to help you understand what's going on here. Most people don't understand Bitcoin, so looking at the opinions of most people as if there's any truth there is pointless.

[hudon]

I believe that the name of a currency is important so that merchants know what they're accepting.

How will the merchants in your world know which currency they're accepting?

[kerkeslager]

They only know which currency they're accepting if they verify that the binary they're running is connected to the blockchain which follows the rules they want.

Admittedly, that's beyond the technical ability of many people, but names don't solve this problem in any way. I can pull a copy of the BCH source code, find/replace every displayed text that says "Bitcoin Cash" with "Bitcoin" but that changes nothing about the currency being exchanged.