Hasn't BTC already won? Hasn't "the market spoken"?

Nor would Bitcoin have split into multiple chains, or hold a gradually declining ~40% cryptocurrecy market share. Source

At an initial glance, many observers conclude Bitcoin BTC has already won and Bitcoin Cash BCH cannot catch up to the brand recognition, liquidity, community size or other metrics. Or even if it was starting to catch up, that Bitcoin BTC would simply raise the block size.

A strong brand or economic size advantage is never insurmountable, nor perpetual. BetaMax, MySpace, Kodak and many other companies are known specifically for being brands with a huge market lead that were passed by competitors for a variety of reasons. So too have many currencies, for example the Roman Denarius is a long dead currency, and the Italian Lira is a more recent example.

The true "winner(s) of cryptocurrency" will only be clear once every single person on the planet makes every single purchase using on-chain cryptocurrency, and fiat currency has been totally eliminated from the entire world. By that metric, the war is just barely beginning. People needing to ask "Isn't it over?" is in itself sufficient evidence that clearly it is not. If BTC had already won, billions of people would be trading it for goods and services every day and the result would be self-evident. This dynamic explains why cryptocurrencies are so tribal.

BTC fans may try to dismiss BCH with the phrase "the market has spoken". The market never stops speaking, otherwise it would be possible to provide the exact UTC timestamp when it stopped and the final price ratio between BTC and BCH at that time. The haters' need to constantly make these claims is indicative they remain hyper aware of BCH and worried about its challenger status for the Bitcoin title. This animosity creates Streisand Effect and raises curiosity in outsiders who can see through insecure attempts to margainalise it as "bcash" plus the contradiction between perpetually recurring claims that BCH is dead and its continued existence.

Some people also concede BCH may have better technology or some other advantage - but that it is irrelevant without strong adoption by the market to match. This is true! BCH must win comprehensively. However, dismissing BCH with this logic is short-sighted, because by the time BCH does have a thriving market of user adoption it is way, way too late for BTC to begin considering competitive reforms. It takes typically a 10x or better advantage for a smaller network to start gaining ground against a larger network. The larger network may rest on its laurels in the meantime, but once the upstart is gaining ground the race is pretty much already over. This is because once an edge is established, responsibility suddenly flips back to the fading incumbent to not only match the 10x improvement (often nearly impossible from a low-momentum, lazy, ossified rut) but even produce a further 10x improvement of its own (ie. a 100x improvement from baseline) in order to justify users switching back! BTC incumbents that feel unconcerned about competitors risk sleep walking into dangerous complacency as more nimble competitors accelerate to a point of uncontestable advantage.