Popular cryptocurrency news and information portal Bitcoin.com has recently changed its “Bitcoin Cash is Bitcoin” narrative, after over 1,000 Bitcoin community members joined forces to take legal action against the St. Kitts-registered company.
As recently covered, Bitcoin users took to Telegram to organize a lawsuit against Bitcoin.com and its CEO Roger Ver, as the popular website was allegedly deliberately misleading towards new users, as it tricked them into buying Bitcoin Cash (BCH) instead of Bitcoin (BTC).
While Bitcoin Cash has forked off the original Bitcoin blockchain, the cryptocurrency’s proponents claim its design is the one closer to Satoshi Nakamoto’s original vision. Hence, they claim Bitcoin Cash is “Bitcoin” and call the original chain “Bitcoin Core.”
In what seems to be an initial victory for the community members who believe Bitcoin.com is tricking newcomers, the website has now altered its content to refer to BCH as Bitcoin Cash, and not as “Bitcoin.”
Some of the company’s other products are still seen as somewhat misleading, however. The company’s cryptocurrency wallet, “Bitcoin Wallet,” creates Bitcoin Cash addresses by default, which could still trick newcomers into buying the wrong cryptocurrency, or sending funds to the wrong address.
Lawsuit Carries On
Taking the misleading language into account, various influential community members support the lawsuit. Litecoin creator Charlie Lee, who initially claimed it was “stupid,” recently retracted his statement after seeing Bitcoin.com changed the language on its website.
I retract my statement calling the lawsuit stupid. I just found out that Roger has changed the website back to listing bcash as “Bitcoin Cash (BCH)” instead of just Bitcoin. So for that, the lawsuit has already done some good. So carry on!
— Charlie Lee [LTC] (@SatoshiLite) May 1, 2018
The lawsuit’s website, bitcoincomlawsuit.info, has recently been updated to reveal funds are necessary to “pursue this full time and protect users from businesses committing fraud and switch practices in the bitcoin eco-system.”
The website is now asking or bitcoin donations, and has at press time only received one for about $3. It adds:
“Already in very short timespan we won a battle and had a positive impact by making bitcoin.com change most (not all) of its misleading and fraudulent practices. With the donations we receive, the team will devote its time and energy to protecting the eco-system from businesses executing fraudulent practices.”
Billionaire Calvin Ayre’s CoinGeek has recently issued a statement claiming it will support Bitcoin.com in the “lawsuit over the real Bitcoin.” The statement notes that CoinGeek “welcomes this as an opportunity to challenge the cultist dogma and subject to scrutiny the merits of BCH against that of BTC in court.”
