Give It A Rest ...

 In the spirit of full disclosure, I currently hold 10 ETH, valued at 0.18 BTC, and 50 ETC, valued at 0.17 BTC. If both chains succeed, awesome. If one fails, ah, well, at least the other succeeds. If they both fail, well bollocks, this was a waste of my time and money.

Alright, the fork has happened. The chain has forked. Ethereum Classic (for want of a better name) has continued with the chain as it was originally. Ethereum (the one that is backed by the foundation, who holds trademarks, copyrights, and IP) has decided to recover the ETH lost in the DAO hack.

Now it’s time to get on with business.

ETC supporters need to stop posting nonsense. It doesn’t matter what flavour it is:

• should the Foundation give us the name Ethereum because we are the real chain
• should the Foundation sell their ETC for ETH
• should the attacker start a new Foundation

All of this is rubbish. It’s mindless rubbish.

The Ethereum Foundation doesn’t owe classic anything. The reality is that Ethereum is living software. It gets updated, and old versions lose support. That is what has happened with the pre-forked chain. It’s the same thing that happened with Mac OS X when Apple decided to move to Intel CPUs – the old PPC architecture got left behind. It happens with Windows. It happens with iOS, and it happens with Android. What happened when Redhat closed access to the compiled binaries of their OS? CentOS was formed. Not Redhat Classic. A whole new project, with a different team, and a different name and a different logo. Ethereum is the same. It’s the software that powers a system, and you have to keep up-to-date if you want the benefits from that. The members of the Ethereum Classic community complain that ETH got the official name and ticker etc. 

Well, Why did Ethereum Classic have to use the Ethereum name at all?

Couldn’t Classic have chosen an independent name? Yeah I can hear the keyboards of all you self-important Ether-Knights clicking away already as you type “We stayed true to the original vision of the project, why should we have to change at all!?” The truth is, you didn’t stay true to the original vision. The original vision was that the Ethereum Foundation would lead the project. You’ve abandoned that already

The Ethereum Foundation doesn’t have to do anything with their ETC if they don’t want to. They created Ethereum, and thus Ether, whatever form it takes. They can keep what is rightfully theirs. The IP, the ETC, the ETH and whatever else they own. They don’t answer to you.

The attacker can also do whatever he likes with his ETC. By maintaining this chain, you have given him the right to those coins. They are his to do with as he see’s fit. Stop speculating on what he will and won’t do. It makes the entire community look like a bunch of Fox News fans.

Now, ETH fans. Don’t think I side with you guys either. You forked from the original chain, and left it to die. It didn’t. Now, you live with the consequences. You get to keep the original name, the original ticker symbol, the branding, and the original domains and so on. You even get to bitch and moan internally when Poloniex, Bitfinex, and the other exchanges all add ETC. But remember, the way you view ETC now is the way Bitcoin viewed you originally. Remember how much you hated the Bitcoin community for that? Yeah, well that’s what you have become now.

So, everyone tied to either or both chains of Ether. Get back in your own corners. Sort out your own projects. Forget the other one even exists, and get on with your lives. All this fighting and bitching on the two subreddits is resulting in only one thing. Confusion for anyone new to the scene. You are scaring off new investors.

It’s time to give it a rest…