Former Wall Street executive Michael Novogratz weighed in on the Bitcoin (BTC) vs Bitcoin Cash (BCH) debate in a tweet Saturday, May 5. Novogratz defended BTC’s status as the original cryptocurrency referred to in Satoshi Nakamoto’s 2008 whitepaper, and the true holder of the ‘Bitcoin’ brand.
Novogratz’s tweet was a reply to a May 4 post from the Bitcoin Cash-promoting Twitter handle @Bitcoin. The @Bitcoin post claimed “Bitcoin Cash is the oldest cryptocurrency” and that “Bitcoin Core (BTC) is an experimental currency that does not have a white paper.”
In addition to defending the brand status of Bitcoin – confusingly referred to as Bitcoin Core, the name of its software client, by its detractors – Novogratz listed other perceived attributes of Bitcoin, taking a stab at Bitcoin Cash along the way: “[BTC] is a store of value. It is digital gold. It’s market cap dwarfs bitcoin cash [sic].”
Novogratz, named one of the richest people in crypto earlier this year, fully entered the cryptocurrency market in 2015 after a lucrative 26-year career on Wall Street, both at Goldman Sachs and Fortress Investment Group. According to Bloomberg, Novogratz was able to raise $250 million for his new venture, the cryptocurrency merchant bank Galaxy Digital, even while cryptocurrency markets were collapsing from record highs in December, 2017.
The debate of brand-legitimacy within the Bitcoin community erupted after a hard fork in the leading cryptocurrency’s blockchain created Bitcoin Cash in August, 2017. Bitcoin Cash protocol changes were made to facilitate the scalability of the cryptocurrency, aiming to make transactions faster and cheaper.
The fight between BTC and BCH nearly reached the point of a lawsuit late last month. Members of the pro-BTC community began a campaign to gather funds for a lawsuit alleging that crypto wallet and media service Bitcoin.com – headed by BCH-proponent Roger Ver – was intentionally misleading buyers to purchase BCH by blurring its distinction from BTC. However, as Cointelegraph recently reported, the lawsuit has been scrapped, with the organizers citing a lack of funding.