Another aspect of propaganda is disinformation which goes hand in hand with censorship. This is a continuation of my previous article where I have revealed the extent of propaganda that Government use to control people, but it's not just limited to Governments, you literally see it all over the place even in day to day relationships, especially if somebody really wants to cover up something, but it all goes back to 1 man who formulated it and organized it into a field of study: Edward Bernays.

You really have to read the works of Bernays, he is like the godfather of propaganda, especially his 1928 book called "Propaganda" which is freely available here.

I have been reading through it, but combining it with my own observations I have observed a few things. First of all don't think about it some kind of secret agents in black suits with sun glasses writing propaganda on the internet or the media, it's actually a lot more widespread, and you see it almost everywhere. It is literally everywhere.

Now I don't really care about UFO conspiracies or Moon Landing or things like that, but I can literally see propaganda and disinformation being spread in Cryptocurrencies, and that I do care about.

It may or may not be a conspiracy, well it is technically a conspiracy, conspiracy to commit fraud perhaps if they are scammers lying their asses off, but it certainly creates a cloud of mist around the subject and leaves many investors confused.

I am talking about the BTC vs BCH feud, which to this day I can't fkin figure out which side is correct, I guess we have a market for that to decide the strongest competitor, but I want to anticipate the market to make money, so as an investor I really have to dive deep into it. So let's start with the basics.

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Disinformation

Disinformation is like a subtle lie placed strategically at the right place at the right time by the perpetrator. Of course it has malicious intent, but the lie is so subtle that it hides even itself, so the perpetrator always has a plausible deniability.

Contrary to expectations a disinformation perpetrator actually tells the truth perhaps 90-95% of the time, but only lies at the right time when it is mostly needed to cover up something bigger while letting the small bits of truth slip out.

Censorship

Censorship is obvious, it's when people are denying your the right to free speech, essentially shutting you up. The issue with disinformation is that since they are telling the truth 95% of the time, eventually even the remaining 5% does leak out, either the perpetrator slips it out, or his subtle lies become suspicious and his game is up.

So this is when the information has to be controlled, limited and even entirely removed.

Conclusion

So censorship goes hand in hand with disinfo, while disinfo is steering people in the wrong path, if they do "wake up" and try to go the other way, the censors will not let them "wake up" other people too.

And we see this all over the place on Social Media right now, all social media giants have implemented censorship policies by 2016, it's almost like a conspiracy by itself. Reddit has became closed source and its shadowbanning people. Did you know that Steemit is banned on Reddit? My article got shadowbanned there. You see this on Facebook and Twitter too. And we also know about the Youtube fiasco with the ad revenue cuts. Is it a conspiracy? It looks like it, but no ultimate evidence.

So a lot of people have been calling out the mainstream media these days (social media is msm too), and they have decided that their propaganda and disinformation has lost it's subtlety now so they are now outright censoring people with this shadowban disgusting thing.

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Now the main topic here is cryptocurrency, as I said I am concerned about the political stuff, but I don't really go into this conspiracy mindset about UFO's and Illuminati, I don't care, it doesn't change my life for better or for worse.

However the BTC vs. BCH feud has been really bothering me simply because I am invested in BTC and if BTC falls possibly my other investments fall too, or I could anticipate it and make money. So there is real financial incentive here, compared to chasing Ghosts or UFO's which nobody cares about anyway.

There are 2 sides here:

• BTC which is Bitcoin Core basically (the main developers), Blockstream, together with Bitcointalk.org forum (theymos), the /r/Bitcoin subreddit and a few miners and their general users
• BCH which is Bitcoin Unlimited, Bitcoin ABC, and a few other projects, the /r/BTC subreddit, Jihan Wu, Roger Ver, and others

Now the main thing that I have observed for a fact is that both sides are dishonest or exaggerating to some extent, neither of them present their case in a rational tone backed up by evidence. So honesty is out of the question here, so maybe it's a false dychotomy, maybe the Bitcoin concept itself is flawed. I have even gone down this road. So perhaps the anonymity aspect of a crypto would be essential, so that is why I got into Monero too. By the way you also have a feud there between Monero and Dash, which is expected, but also pretty hilarious, because all evidence points towards Monero being superior in any aspect (unless you think security through obscurity is a good concept, I can ensure you it’s not, otherwise all Dash mixings can be deanonymized through Blockchain analysis).

Dash vs Monero

So I already know that Monero is better but it is still interesting to study the Dash community and how many shills they have there that invent all sorts of lies and exaggerations about it. Here is a good piece of disinformation:

“In Monero, you can not see the blockchain. Inputs and outputs are obfuscated in a mess. Which by the way, how do you know there is no key to unravel? Dash does this with logic, not mathematical trickery. Who can know if there is a key to unravel a "one way encryption"? This part I may be ignorant on, but as I can't understand it, I don't trust it. They already had their system cracked a couple of years ago, with all previous transactions exposed, how do we know that won't happen again? Dash uses pure logic and statistics. With that, you can keep a transparent blockchain that can be audited to make sure it is functioning properly, that no extra coins were somehow inserted that weren't part of the rewards produced, etc... It also allows for functions where a transparent blockchain is desirable, such as charities that want to show how their funds are spent, or the Core team, who do not mix their funds, and clearly show how they are spending funds so we can see if they are trustworthy or not.”
^{( source, as a trollish reply to my constructive question about Dash’s anonymity system)}

Notice he always evaded my question and purposely avoided responding to my questions about blockchain analysis revealing “anonymized” Dash transactions, but that is another topic.

Notice the first sentence “you cannot see the blockchain”, he actually probably refers to the hidden nature of it, but it’s poorly phrased, but it’s a misdirection since that is the whole point that only you can see the transaction chain through your public key, but you can still see the “ciphertext chain”. Then he says it’s a mess, which almost like an appeal to complexity, just because he doesn’t understand it, that doesn’t mean other’s can’t. The key to unravel part is nonsense as well, the code is open source. So he admits that he is ignorant but he still spews misdirections about things that he knows nothing about, with a very strong opinion. Well how genuine is that?

Then this is the funny part, he claims that Monero was cracked a couple years ago, and if you were ignorant to this point and believed him, because probably an average reader has no more technical understanding than him, but at this point he is straight up spewing nonsense. Monero was not cracked, this is the disinformation part, Monero was only weakened due to a vulnerability that has been patched, but not to the extent that it completely deanonymized people, although it was a big bug, it was not a critical one. However he just inserted his claims in such a subtle way that you almost believed him, even if you did research it, you probably search for it in a search engine and you do see big headlines saying “Monero Cracked”, however most readers just read the headline, they don’t even read the articles.

So this is an example of pure disinformation, and look I am not saying it’s provably intentional, maybe he is just confused or doesn’t understand the details like he admitted, but I doubt it, and even then he should not claim things he does know nothing about. What is more probable in my opinion is that he is emotionally, possibly financially attached to Dash, so he is trying to defend it with whatever he can, even with lies about it’s competitor.

Bitcoin

So really the only thing you can cling onto is evidence. Empirical evidence and their logical conclusion which can be demonstrated to always be true. Nothing less is acceptable, otherwise it can be spinned or misdirected like the claims made above. Only factual evidence is admissible.

Now the problem is that it’s hard to find factual evidence here, since that requires you to be a professional, which neither I nor your average investor is. So we really have to trust the opinion’s of experts, possibly accompanied by evidence. They must dumb down their explanation to a degree so that most intelligent, but not professional, people can understand it, but not more to lose the logical chain of conclusion, or in other words no leaps of faith.

It also has to be a clean debate, no propaganda tactics mentioned above, that is an immediate red flag. Both sides have to be heard out and then let us draw conclusions and discuss them.

Censorship

Now just by these metrics alone it seems like the /r/Bitcoin subreddit, the “Bitcoin Core faction” is the “shady” here. I mean there is overwhelming evidence that the /r/Bitcoin subreddit is censored heavily.

Here is the evidence, plus the countless testimonial evidences given by trustworthy people:

• https://archive.fo/0G8az
• https://medium.com/@johnblocke/r-bitcoin-censorship-revisited-58d5b1bdcd64
• https://medium.com/@johnblocke/a-brief-and-incomplete-history-of-censorship-in-r-bitcoin-c85a290fe43

Now why does a subreddit as big as that need to censor people if they have nothing to hide? Of course they will claim that it’s to keep the trolls and spammers away, but that is a weak claim, since Reddit already bans trolls quickly, so why the need for extra moderation? Control? Power?

On the contrast you have a public moderation log for /r/BTC:

• https://snew.github.io/r/btc/about/log#?theme=btc

Of course the /r/Bitcoin crowd don’t make their moderation log public either. So if they are just keeping spammers away, why can’t they make at least the moderation log public so that people can actually hold them transparent. Nope, no transparency there. Nothing to see here people.

Now I don’t have solid evidence about the forum, I personally haven’t been censored there but I have heard some claims that some people have been or even banned. So I fear that I might get banned too just for writing this, but I don’t care, that will just prove my point of it would happen.

Disinformation

Now the second thing we would have to observe is whether there is disinformation in the “Core” community. Well the term Bitcoin Core is already a disinformation by itself, it implies a central authority, you know, of a decentralized coin. Isn’t that bizarre?

Now the subreddit is mostly filled with “pop” stuff like people showing their new hardware wallets or drawing things on charts, but now and then you see some hatred towards the /r/BTC community, which is granted, I mean they are enemies basically. But note posts like these:

• https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/747oa8/is_rbtc_starting_to_wake_up_to_the_corporate/
  (Which is ironic since Blockstream inc. is the corporation that employs most of the Core devs, so isn’t that the takeover…. Some misdirection here?)

• https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/744vv0/one_good_thing_that_will_come_out_of_the_november/
  (Say’s the 1 man dictator of Litecoin)

• https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/748zqq/tuur_demeester_2x_is_an_attack_on_btc/
  (But I guess the massive censorship that goes on in the subreddit is not)

Now this is the recent stuff but I have seen worse claims there like accusing BCH of trademark violation and pushing for a class action lawsuit and things like that, but they were mostly just a few disarranged people.

But the funny thing is that they don’t even need to put out a lot of disinfo since they already have the community through silencing dissent and a couple good old shill boys gangstalking everyone into intimidation who dares to question the narrative of the echochamber.

Let’s face it, it’s not like an organized propaganda attempt, like if it were a PR agency responsible for Bitcoin’s “good image”. But every shill does it’s part, you dissent, they immediately attack you and intimidate you. I have seen this in other communities so it can easily happen here too.

Conclusion

So just by the modus operandi of the propaganda itself, this follows the same pattern. First they put out a lot of disinfo to get you behind them, then they censor the dissent. I would be interesting to investigate what the hell exactly happened when Gavin and Hearn left, and how the hell did this “Core” team got formed, I haven’t got an explanation of that to this day.

Dig Deeper

Until now this was mostly basic bickering and while there are some red flags on the Bitcoin side, if we dig deeper we find a lot more dirt. Actually it almost looks like it’s a conspiracy:

So there are again legal threats against the BCH crowd, because involving the Government in a decentralized community is just so great:

• https://www.reddit.com/r/btc/comments/747ymi/rbitcoin_is_accusing_ujgarzik_of_violating_the/

Which might be turned against them:

• https://www.reddit.com/r/btc/comments/749c8b/greg_maxwell_and_others_may_be_engaging_in_the/

Patent trolls?

• https://www.reddit.com/r/btc/comments/6vadfi/blockstream_threatening_legal_action_against/
• https://www.reddit.com/r/btc/comments/68kflu/blockstream_having_patents_in_segwit_makes_all/

Then some more disinformation:

• https://www.reddit.com/r/btc/comments/7477sd/according_to_crooked_greg_jeff_merging_optin/

Then you have good yet simple technical explanation why Segwit is horrible:

• https://www.reddit.com/r/btc/comments/74aiq0/how_is_a_segwit_coin_different/

And I have verified this information, many experts claim that Segwit is an altcoin, it literally moves all your coins into a sort of limbo state controlled by the miners, and basically any miner could, with some future vulnerability, empty the entire stash.

• https://www.reddit.com/r/btc/comments/5vbofp/initially_i_liked_segwit_but_then_i_learned/
• https://www.reddit.com/r/btc/comments/6ikna5/segwitcoin_swc_is_a_proofofburn_based_colored/

Of course you also have the argument that a LN channel could possibly need to be opened by the same fee as a normal TX so if the fees go astronomically high due to low block capacity, then how the hell would you open a LN channel if the fee becomes like 1000$? Well simply, it will be a midlemen similar to Paypal that will process all transactions. This is literally the opposite of what Bitcoin was intended to be, yet it looks like they are slowly reverting it to a centralized midlemen based currency.

• https://www.reddit.com/r/btc/comments/6gek0z/average_bitcoin_transaction_fee_is_now_above_five/
• https://www.reddit.com/r/btc/comments/6vi2od/congrats_usovereign_curtis_youve_been_stalind_by/
• https://www.reddit.com/r/btc/comments/6jqrub/game_over_blockstream_mathematical_proof_that_the/

And last but not least you have economics arguments suggesting that Bitcoin can’t be just a store of value, obviously, that would make it a fiat currency, no better than anything other, it has to have some intrinsic utility aside from other cryptos (otherwise everyone would jump the boat to another crypto):

• https://chrispacia.wordpress.com/2017/06/09/bitcoin-cannot-be-only-a-store-of-value/

BTC vs BCH Conclusion

So the evidence is overwhelming, both the technical, and the behavioral, suggesting that the Core team actually is lying about decentralization and transparency when it comes to this issue.

Now we don’t know which is technologically superior, you could make the case that a low bandwidth BTC, even at the expense of decentralization is better at resisting censorship enrolled by net neutrality repeals. And even their shady tactics are justfied if the ends are worth it, but I don’t think it is.

It’s not Bitcoin’s job to save the world, the net neutrality thing has to be fought on legally, against the horribly centralized ISP’s, or go and create a Meshnet, but it’s not Bitcoin’s job.

So Bitcoin should be standalone, built on existing and working protocols, Bitcoin is not an activist currency that can just sneak itself into any corrupt playing field, it has to be cleaned first. So this means that whatever the Bitcoin community needs, that should be provided, and this means that larger blocks are imperatively needed, perhaps some payment integration for full nodes so that they can pay their bills like Dash does if the argument is that the node hosting costs too much.

So this means that this “small block saves you from ISP throttling” argument is bullshit, furthermore the centralization introduced by Segwit and LN is a stupid compromise as well.

So this really leaves us with large blocks, there is no way around it. Sure there will be payment processors built on top of it, but only as microprocessors, like a gambling site resolving internal transactions without the need to relay every single one on the blockchain. They could, and that would really make all businesses transparent (probably should), but not always needer nor necessary.

I’d prefer to not have the blockchain filled with 500 satoshi faucet payments, but on the other hand I don’t want to pay 50$ transaction fees and being subject to civil asset forfeiture either.

So it is really an obvious choice at this point.

And look I have said this many times, that I don’t necessarily like the new wallet developers. I don’t think their wallet software has been vetted that many times yet, nor audited, so there is a possibility that the BCH devs are more amateur, despite being more honest.

Last time I checked there were basically 2 guys, and there were already cases of big bugs found:

• https://steemit.com/bitcoin/@profitgenerator/bitcoin-vs-bitcoin-cash

So I am really waiting for more honest and professional developers to join there, and I don’t even think BCH has stabilized yet, so I’ll probably wait until investing in it, but I do have it on my radar.

Perhaps I’ll wait until this Segwit2x thing goes through, it is a possibility that BTC might be dumped then due to fear, but there is no reason why BCH wouldn’t be either, back to USD. They are both highly correlated, and it looks kind of like a hedge against the immorality going on with Core.

But it’s just that at this point, a sort of hedge tool, which obviously the USD is better at this point.

I am still undecided, but the overwhelming evidence really points towards BCH being much better throughout all aspects. However I just don’t think that this is the right time to enter the market now.

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Sources:

• https://forum.bitcoin.com/topic48603.html

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Upvote, ReSteem &