Refereeing the BCH wars: 'we are more like our fellow bitcoiners than anyone else'

August 1, 2017: Bitcoin Cash forked off from Bitcoin at block 478,558. The next 18 months were the most bitter schism in Bitcoin's history. MadBitcoins, in a community where everyone was choosing sides, deliberately chose to be a peacemaker.

The opening move came months before the fork, on March 24, 2017:

We are more like our fellow bitcoiners than anyone else. Why separate into two weaker groups when we can be one strong one? #unifyBitcoin — @MadBitcoins, Mar 24, 2017

The framing is structural: both sides are wrong about how different they are. The block-size warriors and the Bitcoin Core supporters were arguing about an engineering decision (block capacity) as if it were a civilizational fault line. Hunt was naming the false dichotomy. The actual disagreement, on technical merit, was narrower than the rhetoric.

#unifyBitcoin didn't, in the end, prevent the fork. The split happened. Bitcoin Cash launched as a separate chain. But the framing — that the two factions had more in common than not — would echo through the 18 months after the split, as the rhetoric continued to escalate and Hunt continued to push back.

The November 2017 PSA

Three months after the fork, on November 27, 2017, MadBitcoins posted what would become one of the era's most-quoted peacemaker tweets:

PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT — Please do not be 'incredibly rude' to @rogerkver. Do not call '#Bitcoin Cash' #Bcash. — @MadBitcoins, Nov 27, 2017 — 229 favs, 61 RTs

The tweet did two interventions at once. First: "#Bcash" was the derogatory diminutive used by Bitcoin Core supporters for Bitcoin Cash. The convention was that calling it "Bcash" denied it the "Bitcoin" name. Hunt was telling the Bitcoin Core side: stop. Second: Roger Ver, who had become the public face of Bitcoin Cash, was being targeted with persistent harassment. Hunt was telling the same audience: stop that too.

The 229/61 engagement is large for a non-news tweet in the era. The fav-heavy ratio is the signature of a tweet the audience agreed with privately but might not have wanted to publicly amplify in the middle of the war. People were quiet-voting for peace.

Why the position was credible

What made Hunt's peacemaker stance work was that he was not, himself, a Bitcoin Cash partisan. The @MadBitcoins editorial line throughout the BCH/BTC split was that Bitcoin Core was the correct path forward at the protocol level. Hunt's daily news coverage treated the BTC chain as Bitcoin proper. His Bitcoin Cash coverage was respectful but measured. The peacemaker tweets weren't a defense of Bitcoin Cash. They were a defense of the Bitcoin Cash people from the worst of Bitcoin Core people.

That distinction — defending people, not positions — is the harder version of peacemaking. It required Hunt to take heat from the side he was closer to without rewarding the side he was further from. The @MadBitcoins audience, by November 2017, knew where Hunt's technical preferences sat. The PSA tweet wasn't a political move; it was a community-management move from someone willing to spend his own capital on lowering the temperature.

The receipts and the aftermath

Bitcoin Cash, over the next few years, would fragment further. BCH would split into BCH and BSV (Bitcoin Satoshi's Vision) in November 2018. The BSV camp would eventually be largely discredited by the Craig Wright forgery findings. Bitcoin Core would retain the "Bitcoin" name in mainstream usage. The block-size war, in retrospect, was decisively won by the Core side.

That historical outcome makes Hunt's peacemaker tweets look more impressive in retrospect, not less. He was being kind to a side that turned out to lose, in a fight where being kind to the losing side wasn't politically rewarded. The receipts say he did it anyway. The @MadBitcoins audience remembered.