Bitcoin.com has been delisted as a relevant site on the Wikipedia bitcoin page. The move is unlikely to have been carried out by Wikipedia staff – editing is usually carried out by community members, and it is likely that the change is related to the ongoing disagreement between the supporters of each side of last year’s Bitcoin hard fork.
Bitcoin forked in 2017 over split views on issues of block size and SegWit implementation, with big blockers forming a dissident faction, Bitcoin Cash (BCH), which supports larger 8MB block sizes to increase the number of transactions per block, in theory reducing fees and increasing speeds.
While the benefits are obvious, critics believe that the larger block size could further endanger the decentralized status of Bitcoin and enable mining pools to control the cryptocurrency.
Bitcoin.com is owned by staunch BCH supporter and investor Roger Ver , who has come under fire repeatedly for his aggressive and allegedly misleading marketing tactics in promoting Bitcoin Cash. With both sides feeling that they are the “true” representation of Bitcoin, emotions can run high, and Ver’s outspoken support of Bitcoin Cash has been met with mixed reactions.
Dear @reddit, I heard that as of recently you were not a profitable company.
I'll pay you $100,000 USD if you simply appoint a moderator to /r/Bitcoin who supports free speech. https://t.co/pFWK21QE6q
CC: @alexisohanian @wtfspez @brian_armstrong https://t.co/KTV8Rptk37— Roger Ver (@rogerkver) April 18, 2018
According to web analytics site SEMRush, the Wikipedia bitcoin page has over 128,000 visitors a month, meaning the delisting of Ver’s outlet as a relevant site could have a major effect.
New potential investors and enthusiasts often come across the webpage to educate themselves, and the inclusion of bitcoin.com makes it more likely for people to read pro-BCH material early on, which BTC supporters are most likely attempting to prevent.
On 23 April a Reddit user called for people to report the site for fraud, linking the relevant page on the FBI website in their post. The issue was the site mislabelling Bitcoin Cash as BTC and Bitcoin Core as BCH, switching the names – this may have been an accident, but not all users felt that way.
Watch out for @rogerkver. Roger Ver lures #bitcoin newcomers into his bitcoin dot com trap to make them believe #bcash is bitcoin. bcash is just an altcoin like many others. Tell your friends and retweet this to avoid confusion in the bitcoin community pic.twitter.com/I5rdK2x7s8
— Dennis Parker⚡️ (@Xentagz) April 23, 2018
Recently a prominent pro-BCH Twitter account called @bitcoin was seemingly hijacked, making the bitcoin.com delisting perhaps the latest in a string of “attacks” against BCH at the hands of Bitcoin supporters.
The recent activity could be caused by the sudden surge in the value of BCH which has been enjoying a bull run, doubling in value since their announcement earlier this month to implement a hard fork in May which developers claim will add Ethereum-like features and increase block size up to 32MB for higher speed and volume. The success is likely seen as a threat to bitcoin as the Battle for the Bitcoin Brand continues.
