Before you feel compelled to flag this post, or be angry at me, allow me to make all my points clear. I will do my absolute best to be fair here, and of course expect that those who would like to voice their two cents, would try to be fair as well

His rise to notoriety and Legacy

Roger has been quite controversial almost from the very beginning, his political ideologies are what you would call the furthest away from anything resembling mainstream. It's probably because of his rebellious and courageous attitude that he recognized the potential of cryptocurrencies very early. He is said to be the first real investor of Bitcoin among other cryptos, including ripple believe it or not. And very early in his push for crypto adoption his contributions became crucial to the success that we are seeing today. He's been involved with Bitpay, Kraken, and other names I'm sure most of us would recognize. There was even a time that Roger sported the nickname Bitcoin Jesus, which of course was clever way of describing his cryptocurrency preaching. There are still many videos online of the early days, with many of the interviews being as passionate as one gets.

The big Divide - Block Size Debate

Here is where some people struggle to see the nuance and cast away all pragmatism into a garbage bin. I say this, not because I'm trying to tinge the events with negative bias, but because the conversation is often too emotional and pointless on this matter. I do speculate however, that there was a lot of build up to this point, and not all disagreements were based on the block size debate, but of course that was the focus of all arguments for months. Without getting too technical on the subject, it might be enough to say that Roger vision of bitcoin was to keep it as is, and simply solving the scaling issue with a bigger block, but those who opposed that idea, believed that this would create bloat, and decentralization concerns. In other words, Roger agreed with the rest of the Bitcoin community that we had reached scaling problem, but the solution to said problem was conflictingly different. To me, it seems as if Roger holds up the initial white paper for bitcoin as some sort of holy constitution, but I do understand his position on the matter. If Bitcoin is not used a cash, then it did not solve what it was meant to solve. That is reasonable enough, and as a practitioner of honesty I have to agree. But, I think ideas are always evolving and fixating on purity for the sake of crypto-conservatism, is also not something I can personally sign off on. Another key thing to point out is that 2017 was not the first year were Roger made a push for bigger block sizes. It's somewhat forgotten nowadays but with just a little digging, you can find tweets like this one. These are my biases speaking, but I don't believe that any extreme is healthy and thus anyone who calls themselves "maximalist" is probably someone who does not echo my personal beliefs, but I digress.

Bitcoin Cash enters the Scene

By now we've all heard over and over that 2017 was just a crazy year all around. It seemed as if anything could grow in valuation regardless of use case, development team, etc. Of course, I'm not implying that because of this, BCH made it out of the gate, but it sure helped. The idea of free money sounds just too good to pass up. The most controversial aspect of Bitcoin Cash, a new Bitcoin fork, is not so much that it offered a plausible solution to scaling, but the fact that it's inception was accompanied by a lot of confusion and misdirection. And it's precisely here, where the conversations get emotional. Almost from the beginning of BCh, Roger has insisted almost aggressively that BitcoinCash is the real Bitcoin. Being the CEO of bitcoin.com gave him and his company the ability to muddy up the waters just a little bit. On one front I do have to give Roger props, he has never changed his tune. He has said from the beginning, regardless of any of us agree or not, that Bitcoin Cash is the real Bitcoin, and not once has backed up from that one claim. Now, I won't go much into conspiracies here, but it might be enough to say that there are some theories out there that "prove" this to be the case. I remember reading one or two and scratching my head in confusion. It seems at times we get stuck between theoretical truths and pragmatic ones, and the conversation becomes one of definitions. In other words, completely unproductive.

"Define, definition...."

The fights broke out

And they seem to have never truly stopped. I can't say there's been much healthy debate since those times, it's mostly been who can scream the loudest, and who can ambush who on a podcast. I remember a particular youtuber antagonizing Roger over and over, until he had too much and left the interview with an image that became viral. To be fair to Roger, the intentions of the youtuber were obvious. The purpose of the interview was to ambush Roger and the constant repeating of the term bcash was done with the sole intention of pushing his button, and as we know, it worked well. Since that Interview Roger has appeared on many more shows, including a difficult interview with David Pakman that was shared quite a bit on social media. I do have say David did not play softball at all, but in my opinion Roger handled himself very well.

The interview is well worth watching, as they touch up on many accusations that Roger has faced in the past, and to be honest, there was no tip toeing around them, not even a little bit. The one of most interest however, is the insider trading allegations that surrounded the Coinbase launch. A crazy time when Bitcoin Cash skyrocketed to irrational valuations. If I'm not mistaken it hit $9000 or so before it came crashing down.

Picking Fights & The Blockchain Cruise

I've been keeping track of Roger's activities almost since this whole thing started. For full disclosure, I've had Bitcoin Cash in the past, and would not necessarily have a problem buying it again, as I personally think it works well, but lets continue. As far as I know Roger has tried to argue, or debate as some would call it, just about everyone who would give him an opportunity. The intention of course is to prove to the important leaders of crypto why BitcoinCash is the real Bitcoin, and why Bitcoin is doomed. It's not secret that Roger is vehemently against any scaling solution proposed for Bitcoin that is not on the blockchain. His arguments against the lightning network are valid, but in my view they also fail to see one small yet powerful detail. Logical consistency. I doubt he regrets that particular tweet, but I think he might have a clever way of explaining himself. How does that new saying go? That didn't age well I should say to be completely fair, that the censorship that allegedly happens in reddit does not necessarily mean that Roger is directly involved, or that he even condones it. The blockchain cruise was another indication that we seem to not be progressing from this damaging stage. All I say, and I'm not trying to be dramatic here was Trablism and Worship, and after watching the debates, which I hesitate to recommend to be honest, I was left with a bitter taste in my mouth. I still don't know if anything has been gained from these "debates" and I think using the word debates is quite generous to be honest. They were a little more than shouting matches in front of a pool of people who probably had a little too much to drink, it was a cruise after all. Recently Roger has been publishing more videos about the cruise, and of course as a cryptocurrency enthusiast I've been watching them with close attention. That being said recently he posted and "interview" he did with Charlie Lee, and that bad taste in my mouth returned.

The whole interview was a discussion on semantics, and to make matters worse, Roger attacked Charlie repeatedly with insinuations of him being a communist. Yes, I know what some people are going to say, that he didn't quite mean it that way, but let's be honest about this. Let me translate the verbal jousting into simple terms: a) Agree with me and say Bitcoin has no intrinsic value at all b) Disagree with me and you are a communist I did make it through all the video, as much as I was getting ready to give up on it a few times. I did notice a point on the video were Roger let down his verbal weapons for a second and showed what I believe to be sensible side. It's very much true that Roger has been attacked a lot, and has been somewhat outcasted from the crypto elites, but I would hesitate to call him an innocent victim as well.

Conclusion

In all honesty It would take many more hours or possibly days to compile everything controversial Roger has done, but that's not really the intention of this post, at least not this time. All that I'm trying to do is understand what his mission is, because it seems to me that he either doesn't not understand how much he hurts his message, or that he does, but doesn't care. Before you ask, I've reached out to him a few times, but of course, no response. Why would there be? I'm not a whale or a crypto elite of any kind. But, I think my questions were quite reasonable. I'll close by saying this; I doubt Roger will read this post or respond to it, and that's ok I guess. But in the off chance that he does, I want him to know that I'm all for BCH succeeding, it can be a great crypto by all means, but I just don't know how his actions are being helpful lately, I seriously can't see the win anywhere.