It seems contradictory to an extent that Jihan Wu, one of the main pioneers of the Bitcoin Cash (BCH) agenda as a solution to the scalability issue, would come out openly to make a bold statement about BCH not being Bitcoin (BTC).

Jihan Wu’s tweet: “Bticoin Cash is not Bitcoin.”

However, the message, which is a move away from the comparisons that have always been made between BCH and BTC as a subject of debate, has turned out to be a contributing factor to the trigger in the BCH price hike. BCH is one of the only 10 coins in the top 100 that have been up in the past 24 hours – its price has risen by about 80% as at the time of this writing.

Its proponents have always maintained that BCH delivers on-chain scaling which BTC lacks hence it has been receiving the capital fleeing into altcoins from the top digital currency. This may have been confirmed by the bearish state of the cryptomarket over the weekend which indicates there’s been a huge sell off of altcoins and some of them could have been channelled into BCH with almost 60% of the volume reportedly coming through three South Korean exchanges – Bithumb, Korbit and CoinOne.

The latest tweet as well as several others before it seem to have shot BCH up as part of a planned out strategy. This view has been strengthened by several claims (such as this) that BCH may become more stable and profitable in coming days and some of BTC’s hashing power may move to BCH. While the rise and its pace may suggest a dump could come soon, the trend shows the influence the words of an important person in the ecosystem still have on a section of the cryptomarket.

What the tweet portends  
The main analogy behind Jihan Wu’s statement could be traced to the historical ties between the US and the UK (England). The Americans, who have grown to run a superpower country today, were once a subject of the English before they became independent of the UK. Applying that thinking to the BTC/BCH context, it could mean that Wu is trying to say that the market should expect to see BCH becoming more powerful than BTC though no known time was stated.

While the statement has also been cited as being used to steer competition away from SegWit2x – the proposed change to the consensus rules of the Bitcoin network, it could also imply a contribution to efforts aimed at setting out a free market in which the people are given the liberty to determine the fate of whichever they choose to embrace between BCC and BTC.

Either way, the debate over the design of BTC as decentralized and BCC considered to be under the control of a few – centralized mining – still persists. BCC is alleged to have no developers and has been operating on a pump and dump price action. Meanwhile, as the description of BCC as a scam coin by non-technical people with a stolen blockchain and an invented value continues, those who still believe in it as having the scaling solution that BTC lacks are not relenting.

Litecoin to the rescue?
Now, the outlook seems to be focused on BTC’s big ally: Litecoin. With its strong alliance with BTC, promoting Litecoin at this point by buying more of it to gain market share – it is cheaper especially for many people who are just joining the crypto world – seems a logical option that could help save BTC from the damages that BCH poses. This is particularly important as there are suggestions that BTC blocks could slow down in coming days leading to higher transaction fees and network congestion.