FAQs

Cryptocurrency and Bitcoin Cash is an immensely deep topic. However, like anything, there are some questions which almost everyone wonders about at one time or another. This is a collection of answers that are short enough to digest quickly, but long enough to encapsulate a complete idea.

Q: Why Bitcoin Cash instead of another cryptocurrency?#

There are more than 10 000 cryptocurrencies today, with more started every day. Why is Bitcoin Cash going to succeed among all of those cryptocurrencies?

Bitcoin Cash and other Bitcoin forks have the following unique advantages vs all other coins:

• Anonymous & inactive founder: Almost no other cryptocurrencies have a completely unknown founder. Almost all coins have a known founder, who will have a large stash of coins in the system and/or a voice of authority in the community. Because Satoshi is completely anonymous and been inactive since 2011, the coin itself cannot be attacked by threatening, influencing, bribing or smearing its founder and its development occurs without anyone being able to say "I founded Bitcoin and I think...". Other coins tend to have either financial or social control vested to a certain degree in their founder.
• Fair distribution: Today, anyone launching a new coin is besieged by people immediately trying to mine or buy it to get rich, and founders often allocate themselves secret portions before launch. The early days of Bitcoin had no such event, as it was not known that cryptocurrencies would be valuable, and thus it was distributed more fairly and publically initially to those who had a non-monetary interest in it. This is impossible to replicate for any other coin.
• Time: The Lindy effect predicts that the longer something exists, the longer it is likely to continue. Bitcoin was the first launched cryptocurrency, and therefore unless the Bitcoin network stops, it is impossible for any other coin (which were all launched years later) to garner the same trust through reliability across time.
• Brand: "Bitcoin" is the brand synonymous with the general term "cryptocurrencies", just like "Google" and "search engines" or "Kleenex" and "tissues". Coins that did not fork from the original Bitcoin cannot lay claim to this branding, and therefore are perpetually disadvantaged in terms of earning consumer trust.
• Mining network: All Bitcoin forks share the SHA256 hashing algorithm, and thus the billions of dollars in mining infrastructure built around the world. The smaller forks (such as BCH) are constantly able to draw in more of that mining security as they grow, while other coins always have small and less secure mining networks with less vested interests in protecting the coins being mined.

Bitcoin Cash specifically has the following advantages vs all other coins, including other Bitcoin forks:

• Unbreakable community: Bitcoin Cash is the only coin in existence to survive both a "minority" fork (from Bitcoin BTC) and "majority" forks (from Bitcoin Satoshi's Vision BSV and eCash XEC). Most other major coins have had 0 contentious forks, some have had 1 (BTC, ETH), no others have had 2 let alone 3. A contentious community fork is a very traumatic event for a cryptocurrency, and only a very dedicated and passionate community will ensure its survival in such an event. The Bitcoin Cash community has fought longer and harder for its survival in more battles than any other coin.
• Decentralised development: Related to the point above, BCH is the only coin where the community have "voted out" the developers programming the protocol on multiple occassions, when their desire for a usable currency overcame the technical influence and status of high-profile developers. A coin is not decentralised if its development team is a central point of control. BCH and ETC (Ethereum Classic) are the only coins to have ever provably upheld this, and only BCH has done so multiple times.
• Scalability: Unlike other cryptocurrencies, Bitcoin Cash has a realistic plan to be usable by everyone on the planet, while remaining efficient and decentralised. Other coins either cannot reach global scale, or must sacrifice decentralisation, cheap transfer fees and/or direct custody of private keys to do so. The reason Bitcoin Cash has this unique advantage is the original genius design by Satoshi Nakamoto, which other cryptocurrencies and other Bitcoin forks have abandoned.
• Disenfranchised early adopters: Satoshi released Bitcoin with the vision of the entire world using Bitcoin as a peer to peer electronic cash and that is what the earliest adopters were passionate about. After the Blocksize war, many supporters of that vision, opposed to the BTC takeover, fragmented into a variety of cryptocurrency projects or left the industry entirely. Many of those early adopters are still passionate about the peer to peer electronic cash project and/or rich and/or influential. They remember what Bitcoin used to be like. As BCH builds momentum, those individuals will recognise that it is still the project they once loved, return to the community and once again devote their resources towards it. The Bitcoin Cash Podcast itself is an early example of this phenomenon (see About), but it can be expected that many others will emerge. These early community members, who drove Bitcoin to its initial success, are a very potent collective that should not be underestimated. No other coin has any chance to receive decentralised and voluntary support from a significant majority of these members.
• Controversy: Bitcoin Cash, due to its unique history of preserving the Bitcoin whitepaper design and peer to peer commerce ethos in defiance of extreme vilification, is by far the most controversial cryptocurrency ever. No other coin is as loved by its supporters (to persist through so much adversity) or as hated by its detractors (who fear it as a threat, either to their investment in Bitcoin BTC or to existing government currency systems). No other coin, including Bitcoin BTC, has been attacked and decried to the extent that Bitcoin Cash has. Both the fervent passion of its haters to destroy it and its community to protect it are indicators that Bitcoin Cash is a true paradigm shift in the status quo. Also, the Streisand effect generated by its detractors ensures it remains uniquely notorious among a sea of other interchangeable cryptocurrencies.

See also: Nothing is perfect, why NOT Bitcoin Cash?

See also: Should (or will) Bitcoin Cash rebrand?

Q: Nothing is perfect, why NOT Bitcoin Cash?#

Bitcoin Cash is amazing, but like anything there are valid points of view that disagree it will become the world reserve currency. Anyone using or investing in Bitcoin Cash should of course be aware of both sides of the argument.

The strongest arguments against Bitcoin Cash are:

• Branding: Its brand name appears on the surface as a "knock off" of the """original""" Bitcoin. Historically this is not true, as BTC and BCH both split from the original Bitcoin, but to the uninformed observer BTC seems more legitimate.
• Misinformation: Due to the branding conflict, Bitcoin Cash (BCH) frequently suffers derogatory accusations and misinformation from Bitcoin (BTC) supporters and investors, calling it a scam, centralised etc.
• Forks: Bitcoin Cash has had several community forks, first when it split from Bitcoin (BTC), and later on when Bitcoin Satoshi's Vision (BSV) and eCash (XEC) split away. These forks filtered out people from the community who wanted to try another direction with the project, but they also slowed the momentum of BCH. This could (potentially) continue to happen. One point of view is that these splits prove that Bitcoin Cash is not controlled by any one individual but rather by the community as a whole, but it could also be said that so many forks has just delayed the project too much to gain critical mass.
• Network effect: For the above reasons, Bitcoin Cash has had a very difficult time building a network effect, which is critical to currencies.
• Hash rate: Bitcoin Cash (BCH) has had a far lower percentage of the mining hash rate than Bitcoin (BTC). The miners (usually) distribute themselves in the price ratio between the coins, and since BTC has had a higher price than BCH it has had more miners, thus more hash rate and better security. As the price of BCH increases or decreases relative to BTC, it gets increased or decreased miner support. If BCH becomes more valuable than BTC, then this argument will flip and BTC will be the less secure coin. In practice, BCH has had no successful hash rate attacks because all of the miners prefer to make profits in both BTC and BCH and have proactively moved to defend BCH whenever there has been suspicion of potential attacks.

The case against Bitcoin Cash can largely be solved with increased user education (to clarify the difference with BTC) and increased adoption (therefore boosting price and thus hash rate). However, critics argue that BCH will never be able to overcome those obstacles.

See also: Why Bitcoin Cash instead of another cryptocurrency?

See also: Should (or will) Bitcoin Cash rebrand?

Q: Should (or will) Bitcoin Cash rebrand?#

No.

Due to the conflict with the Bitcoin BTC branding and therefore frequent confusion and the need to perpetually explain to new users, it is a common suggestion that Bitcoin Cash (BCH) as the smaller coin should rebrand.

The community will correctly never do this, for a number of reasons:

• The real Bitcoin: The BCH community came into existence to protect the original mission of Bitcoin in Satoshi's whitepaper, a peer to peer electronic cash system. This is the founding ideal of the community, and an ideologically-driven position they will not compromise on under any circumstances. This level of committment is a key strength of the community. Similar to the way North and South Korea both claim to be "the" Korea, both do not recognise each other's claim and will fight to their dying breath over that principle, Bitcoin BTC and Bitcoin Cash BCH are in a similar all-or-nothing struggle. History has not decided who is "the real Bitcoin" until one side surrenders the claim or is totally eliminated, and the Bitcoin Cash community will not surrender, ever. This claim is validated by 4+ years with minority branding, minority hash rate and disapproval by price speculators. The BTC side claim the same conviction, but have no proof the faith of their community could survive even a single day (let alone years on end) without the unearned default legitimacy and market value of the Bitcoin brand name. There is every possibility that when BCH reclaims majority hashrate, price, and decentralised approval from the marketplace as the real Bitcoin that the demoralised BTC community will splinter into pieces and be gone forever.
• Consumer education: Confusion over the BTC and BCH brand is a burden of user education, which is overwhelmingly shouldered by BCH as the minority community. This contains a subtle but powerful advantage, consumers cannot choose BCH from ignorance. Many speculators or misinformed market participants may choose BTC by default without understanding the history or trade-offs against BCH (either unaware of it, or misinformed that it is a "scam"), but the reverse is not true. In aggregate, this means the BCH community is far more educated on cryptocurrency generally, far more dedicated to the community vision, and far more resilient in a time of crisis. Former BTC supporters are common in the BCH community, but the reverse is vanishingly rare or unheard of. Over time, this one-way flow of converts is a key advantage for BCH.
• Consumer trust: Being associated with the Bitcoin branding can be confusing, but it has a silver lining. Consumers trust the Bitcoin brand as it is most familiar, and even if it is confusing they will still trust something linked to Bitcoin after some explanation far faster than they will develop that trust for any of the other 10 000+ unrelated cryptocurrency brands.
• Existing network effect: Changing might prevent conflict with BTC, but it also destroys several years of work establishing the current BCH brand and there is no evidence that would be a worthwhile trade.

Note that calls for BCH to rebrand frequently come from the BTC community themselves. This is an indication they feel threatened and insecure about their ability to win the war for Bitcoin against BCH, as they rarely make the same overtures to the far smaller Bitcoin SV, Bitcoin Gold, or other Bitcoin fork communities.

See also: Why are cryptocurrencies so tribal?

See also: If BCH improved on BTC by raising the 1MB block size limit, what if BTC does the same??

Q: How are goods and services priced in Bitcoin Cash? Isn't the volatilty a problem?#

A: Most goods and services in the economy are priced in US dollars (or the relevant local fiat currency), but simply paid for with BCH. The price fluctuations are not a problem, as your BCH wallet app will automatically detect the right amount to send based on the current price. Point of sale transactions are easy and fast, it looks like this:

Bitcoin Cash is not expected to be stable relative to goods and services until it has subsumed most of the world economy. The more daily trade it supports, the less any individual trade will affect it, so by the time it is global size it would be stable similar to the current US dollar (except consumer prices would slowly drift down over time instead of up). Before reaching global size, it will always be volatile, as it will either be small and therefore heavily affected by variable daily trade, or already quite large and therefore will be absorbing non-BCH trade at a faster and faster rate.

During the transition, it is up to you whether to price things in your local fiat currency if that makes sense to you, or to switch to pricing in Bitcoin Cash if it makes sense for that item and either you or the economy around you has disconnected sufficiently from fiat currencies. For example, early access to episodes of The Bitcoin Cash Podcast is priced directly in BCH (e.g. 0.003 BCH aka 3 milliBCH). The price for an episode is set, and then is stable in BCH but fluctuates mildly in USD.

Q: Where and how can I get Bitcoin Cash?#

There are three ways to acquire Bitcoin Cash:

1. Mine BCH (not recommended): These days, mining is a specialised industry with thousands of machines run in specialised data centers so mining BCH is not feasible for individual investors - it would cost more electricity to mine the coins than the value of the coins themselves, and therefore the two alternatives below are more effective and efficient at acquiring BCH.
2. Buy BCH:. Just like any other crypto or fiat currency, BCH coins can be purchased using any other currency. Individuals will need to research their local options for exchange by searching the internet for Cryptocurrency exchange BCH --your location-- or asking a cryptocurrency friend. BCH is one of the largest and oldest cryptocurrencies, and will be available in 99% of places that sell Bitcoin (BTC) or other cryptocurrencies.
3. Earn BCH (recommended): The best method to acquire BCH is the same as any other kind of money, earn it directly! Employees at a business can request to have part or all of their salary paid in BCH, business owners can accept BCH directly as payment for goods or services, and the unemployed can look for work directly in the cryptocurrency economy by contacting BCH based projects or starting with BCH platforms such as read.cash or Noise.cash.

Q: How can I afford a whole Bitcoin Cash?#

A Bitcoin Cash (BCH) is divisble into 100 million parts, called satoshis (named after Satoshi Nakamoto, the inventor). You can buy, sell or trade in any amount of BCH, no matter the price. As the price of BCH increases, the economy simply deals in smaller and smaller units.

Don't worry though, most of this is taken care of by automatic conversions in your wallet software to/from your local fiat currency so it is not a hassle.

Dealing in decimals can be confusing, so people sometimes use alternatives units. Instead of an unfriendly number like 0.00438 BCH, the same thing can be written 4.38 mBCH. The unit scheme is like this:

If Bitcoin Cash becomes so valuable that 1 satoshi is regularly being traded, the software can be upgraded to split a single BCH into even smaller pieces, like cutting 1 pizza into smaller and smaller slices - same total amount, but easier to divide among more people.

Q: If the value of Bitcoin Cash is expected to go up, why would anyone ever spend it?#

An individual that holds their cryptocurrency and spends only their fiat money will eventually run out of fiat money, and thus either spend their cryptocurrency or starve (or become homeless, everyone needs to pay for rent and food). In practice, people have all kinds of things they want today (and not tomorrow) even if delaying their gratification would potentially produce a small profit. The entire point of money is to spend it on something else (or bequeath it in inheritance, for someone else to spend) and cryptocurrency is just money. Consider that a newer, cooler, faster, cheaper mobile phone is always available 6 months in the future compared to today, and yet mobile phone sales are perpetually strong since people want what's available now.

An individual that understands Bitcoin Cash is expected to rise against endlessly printed fiat currencies, will also tend to allocate a larger and larger share of their net worth into it (subject to their individual financial circumstances and ability to handle price fluctuations), until they have little or no fiat currency remaining. This reallocation leads to spending crypto by necessity as well.

As the price of Bitcoin Cash (or other cryptocurrencies) rise against fiat currencies (such as the US Dollar), holders of cryptocurrency tend to spend more often rather than less, a phenomenon known as "The Wealth Effect". For example, if a user has $10 of BCH, which rises to be worth $20, they may decide to make a $5 purchase of something they already had their eye on since it feels to them like they have received $10 of "free" money through price appreciation and can justify treating themselves.

See also: Where can I spend Bitcoin Cash?

Q: Where can I spend Bitcoin Cash?#

Bitcoin Cash accepting merchants in your area can be found on the Bitcoin.com map. Anything available on Amazon is available for purchase with BCH (at a 15%+ discount!) using Purse.io. Other projects and services may be available in the local area for Bitcoin Cash holders to investigate for themselves.

BCH enthusiasts are also encouraged to ask places they shop or their friends if they will accept BCH as a form of payment. Don't force it! The Bitcoin Cash ethos is for users to have individual freedom, freedom to accept or reject Bitcoin Cash (or any currency) as they see fit. However many merchants will be open minded to the idea if they have an ongoing relationship with a repeat customer that they can see enjoys their product, and many individuals will be willing to deal with their friends or family in BCH given the pre-existing foundation of trust. In this way, the BCH economy spreads and opens new trade opportunities to everyone else already trading Bitcoin Cash or other cryptocurrencies without the need for government fiat.

Q: In future, can I pay in any cryptocurrency I like?#

Currently there is no simple "Scan QR code and send" universal cryptocurrency solution. However, services do exist that allow simple swapping from any coin to any other coin for a fee (for example Sideshift.ai) so it is only a matter of time until a standard emerges that allows customers to pay in any cryptocurrency the customer prefers and the merchant receives any cryptocurrency the merchant prefers. At this point, the differentiator between cryptocurrencies will still be coins with a limited supply that can support the largest network of payments with the highest efficiency (lowest fees), which of course is the speciality of Bitcoin Cash.

Q: Is there a use for Bitcoin (BTC) for savings like a savings account, and Bitcoin Cash (BCH) for daily spending like a checking account?#

Individuals can manage their own finances however they wish, and split their "savings" in to Bitcoin and "spending" into Bitcoin Cash if they like. However, in the long run, Bitcoin (BTC) is irrelevant in a world where Bitcoin Cash (BCH) exists, similar to how telegram services became completely unnecessary once telephones were widely available. Bitcoin Cash can support the entire range of transactions from $0.01 up to millions of dollars at low fees, while Bitcoin can only support a limited range of transactions starting at $100+ due to fees being regularly $5+. BCH is useful both to spend (any size) and save, while BTC is only useful to spend (moderate - large transactions) and save. Therefore, individuals that balance their accounts between BTC and BCH will increasingly find that they have no need for BTC and transferring back and forward to BCH is an expensive hassle that adds no extra utility compared to just holding and spending everything in BCH. BCH holders often have separate BCH wallets for their long term savings and their daily spending though, which achieves the same effect as the bank account.

Q: If BCH improved on BTC by raising the 1MB block size limit, what if BTC does the same?#

They won't.

By definition, everyone who supported raising the block size left the community (some to BCH, some elsewhere) after BTC refused to cooperate on it. The remaining BTC individuals, unswayed by years of passionate debate, were totally steadfast that raising the blocksize should never be an option, and they actively rooted out and censored any dissenting voices. Since then, new community members have only been told one side of the story, and are even less likely to be interested in a block size increase.

If there was ever a question of raising the limit, the heretical thinker would be cast out and find it easier to switch to Bitcoin Cash than to convince an entire community zealously against the idea. Even if a substantial minority liked the idea, their ideas could only lead to the same hostile fork outcome (and chaos in the BTC community) as BCH has already been through. No one in that camp is convinced of raising the limit, and if they change their minds it's easier to change sides and join BCH than start again.

Prominent influencers in the BTC scene all believe firmly and publicly in the 1MB approach, and if they change their tune it would be a huge credibility and reputational loss and immediately reignite discussion that perhaps BCH has been right all along.

Even in the very, very unlikely scenario that BTC did agree to raise the blocksize limit (perhaps due to a surging BCH) without a calamitous meltdown, that only gets them to the point BCH was at 1st August 2017. Since then, BCH has been building further and further ahead, and BTC has a long way to catch up. Scaling via blocksize is more straightforward than building a Lightning Network, but it still requires a lot of work on optimising node software and network capacity planning.

Finally, raising the block size limit does not fix the underlying social problem of BTC, that it has a single developer team (Bitcoin Core) who have dictatorial control over the protocol development. Soon enough, another issue would occur where that central point of control proved a critical weakness either intentionally or unintentionally.

See also: Should (or will) Bitcoin Cash rebrand?

Q: Why are cryptocurrency communities so tribal?#

Many new to the scene will discover that many cryptocurrency communities are very set in their beliefs, to the point of actively excluding other coins or points of view even. This is because:

1. Many people have a financial investment in their chosen coin succeeding.
2. Many people have an emotional investment in their chosen coin succeeding (e.g. tensions between BCH and BTC camps after the Blocksize war, but there are plenty of examples).
3. Cryptocurrency is a "winner take most" phenomenon. Cryptocurrency is an absolutely cutthroat free market, with no rules and lots of competition. Due to the network effect (a currency is better when more people trade it), the first coin to truly breakthrough to the mainstream in adoption will outstrip every other coin 100x in size. This means that every coin has to be playing to win, and if a coin's community is not planning to go to #1 then they're better off not bothering to try at all. Of course this produces a very "us against the world" mentality by default.

Bitcoin Cash is shooting to be the coin used everyday by the whole world, so it does have that mindset.

This does NOT mean the BCH community should be unwelcoming, closed to innovations in other coins, hostile or exclusionary (a mistake made by some other communities). Individuals can allocate their own resources among any number of coins as they see fit. However, the overall Bitcoin Cash community attitude will be along the lines of "We are going to make BCH so much better than every other coin, that everyone can't avoid getting involved."

See also: Should (or will) Bitcoin Cash rebrand?

Q: What about Ethereum / Litecoin / Dogecoin?#

Every coin has its pros and cons, and so an unbiased objective take is impossible. Cryptocurrency is a free market of ideas and voluntary involvement, and the best coins must prove themselves in it, including BCH. Readers are encouraged to explore the communities, apps and events that other coins have to offer and hear both sides of the argument. However, as a candidate for being the global reserve currency, other coins tend to have serious flaws that make them a less viable candidate than BCH.

Ethereum#

Ethereum is a groundbreaking project that added the ability to make any kind of computer program run on a blockchain instead of just monetary payments.

Ethereum was not opposed to scaling the block size, but because they had an "accounts" based system instead of a "UTXO" system like Bitcoin or Bitcoin Cash and because Ethereum can store any general computer code rather than just simple transaction data, larger block sizes could only get them so far. Fees have risen dramatically on Ethereum, and the planned solution to transition to "Eth 2.0" will fragment the interoperability of programs on the blockchain into less secure or exceptionally complicated "Layer 2"s, similar to BTC and the Lightning Network.

Ethereum's original promise that "code is law" was broken in the events of the "DAO hack". A large portion of the Ethereum community had invested millions of dollars of Ether into a smart contract organisation, until a hacker found a way to drain the funds to their private wallet. In this crisis scenario, the Ethereum community decided to roll back transactions on the network and undo the money sent in to the DAO, saving their money but destroying any credibility in Ethereum as an immutable system free from arbitrary interference or censorship. A segment of the Ethereum community that remained committed to honouring the principle of an immutable blockchain split away into a new coin called Ethereum Classic (ETC), similar to how BCH split from BTC (but for different reasons).

Ethereum also suffers some degree of social centralisation around its co-founder, Vitalik Buterin. His ideas are widely regarded in the community, which is betting a lot on his ability to always make the right move through perfect judgement and lack of external influence. If this changed for any reason, the entire community would lack leadership and direction.

Bitcoin Cash has adopted the entire EVM (Ethereum Virtual Machine) infrastructure with its sidechain smartBCH, allowing BCH to run everything Ethereum can run at 80x or more efficiency. By isolating this to a sidechain (a separate blockchain which BCH can be moved across to and back), storage space issues do not compound with the main chain like in Ethereum.

Litecoin#

Litecoin markets itself as "silver to Bitcoin's gold", which is a catchy but meaningless slogan. The use of silver and gold metals as a pair for coin minting historically was because denominating gold bars in small units was impractical due to lack of gold or their small physical size, so silver coins could supplement the circulating supply and provide practical small denominations. This is entirely unnecessary in cryptocurrency however, as software can divide crypto coins down to any fraction with perfect accuracy.

True to this mindset of being a "supplement" to Bitcoin, Litecoin is one of the oldest cryptocurrencies and yet it is also one of the least innovative. No major breakthrough in cryptocurrency has ever come from the Litecoin community, nor does it ever seem likely, as their developers simply copy BTC updates.

Its adoption for payments is low.

The flagship change of Litecoin from Bitcoin was increasing the block time (from 10 minutes to 2.5 minutes), thus increasing capacity 4x. However, their community also prefers to copy the BTC scaling strategy of never raising the block size, therefore this tiny gain cannot help them scale to be a worldwide payments system.

Dogecoin#

Dogecoin has done a great job making cryptocurrency approachable and introducing new people to the scene. However it is not viable to be a world currency, even if Elon Musk thinks that would be funny. The attraction of the Doge community originally was their lighthearted, charitable attitude. For a small network, that's fine, but as the network scales up in both technical investment and financial investment the "haha this is all just for fun" vibe starts to die pretty quickly. Without that spirit, Dogecoin has a dearth of development, infrastructure or serious committment to the project beyond making a few jokes or charitable donations. On top of that, a rapidly appreciating price quickly turns from "This is all for fun" to "let's get rich!", a free ride attitude that cannot be sustained during an inevitable pullback.

What if governments ban/regulate crypto?#

Crypto is essentially purpose designed to defeat governments, so they aren't going to have much luck. Consider the following factors:

• Priorities: Governments are busy. They have to worry about roads, healthcare, education, protesting citizens, other countries etc. etc. etc. Crypto doesn't. Government has a few days a year to fight crypto, but crypto has every day to fight government.
• Coordination: Governments are not coordinated. They struggle to act consistently within one country, let alone cooperate internationally. The cryptocurrency industry is not centrally coordinated, but it is universally interested in subverting or creating grief for governments, leading to an unstoppable onslaught of randomly varied crypto attacks.
• Attack surface: Governments have no obvious point to attack cryptocurrency. Even just Bitcoin Cash is hard to find a weak point, given that the miners, nodes, users and exchanges all are hard to effectively fight. Then consider that BCH is just one of 10 000 cryptos, which each have their own technology, community and approach to resisting government interference.
• Innovation: Crypto is fast. The industry innovates and evolves at breakneck speed (not to mention, coins can copy from each other), which slow-moving legal and political entities cannot hope to keep up with.
• Economic incentives: Crypto rewards acceptance. A government that bans crypto merely encourages other governments to embrace crypto and receive the flood of business and investment from the crypto industry into their economy. Governments can only ban themselves from benefiting from crypto, they can't stop the industry globally.
• Internal crypto converts: Government is filled with crypto adopters. Government officials and legislators will invest in crypto or have crypto holdings, and therefore quietly undermine any government attack on it from within to protect their own investment.

Government meddling may be able to slow crypto a little, but not all that much, and it is a battle they absolutely cannot win in the long run.