On August 1st, 2017 Bitcoin Cash was created as a fork of Bitcoin. It is meant to be the true ‘scalable’ version of Bitcoin. The resulting split has been dramatic, and the dispute has been covered in full many times.
The Question
Can Bitcoin scale to mass adoption by itself, or does Bitcoin need additional layers that live on top of it to help it scale?
Bitcoin Camp No, Bitcoin can’t scale by itself. It needs additional layers like the Lightning Network, and we should wait for those layers to be developed.
Bitcoin Cash Camp Yes, it can scale and we already made the tweak needed. The Lightning Network is promising but it is not ready for primetime and we should not stake our future on it.
Surprisingly, the question is not, ‘Should Bitcoin be used as Cash?’ Both sides agree it should be used for purchases.
The Answer
TBD. Both communities may be correct or another option may present itself in the future. Regardless, the biggest impact to come from the Bitcoin Cash fork has been the split in the community. It has been a vicious fight, with a lot of prominent members of the Bitcoin community joining the Bitcoin Cash camp.
How Bitcoin ends up scaling in a feasible way is unknown, but what is undoubtable is the damage to the Bitcoin community. Bitcoin’s uncompromising culture has been heralded by its community as one of its greatest strengths. However, it seems that the uncompromising culture has fractured the community and it will be interesting to see if it can be repaired.
