“The Merc” is banned from participating in Vox.cash, Unspent and Future BCH.

For quite some time, an individual has been interacting in bad faith with new developers and emerging projects throughout the Bitcoin Cash space.

This individual is now banned from Vox.cash, unspent.cash/unspent.app, and Future BCH, under the respective Code of Conducts for those projects.

The problem of a stable global currency system.

There is no way to patent a written legal contract. There are no intellectual property protection around folks thinking an idea or understanding logic, writing it down and using it in their own business with others.

Markets are made of contracts. Global currencies and trade are stabilized by markets.

So the way markets of contracts are protected is through sabotage, subversion, and acquisition. The dominant exchanges break competing emerging markets to protect their position.

They have to do this because, as folks in bitcoin know, there is nothing to prevent a group of people from creating a broken clone of your project and marketing it to the world as the genuine article.

One sock account for every channel.

Bitcoin Cash is a very small ecosystem. There are roughly a dozen people that show up daily to build and participate, month in and out, year after year.

There are very few people in Bitcoin Cash that are clearly former professional traders, perhaps one. There are very few folks who would shill buying paper Bitcoin Cash shares (off-chain) representing a fraction of a trust. There’s very few people that would engage in malicious bad-faith trolling of other people and projects in the space.

As far as I can tell, there’s been one individual interacting with the community, and new developers specifically, though a set of sock accounts. But, because there are so few people in the space, community members easily spot them, and begin to give off ‘tells’ that they know the identity behind the sock.

Last Wednesday, I poked one such sock account on reddit (u/upunup), and got them to engage directly in gas-lighting and misinformation about my ongoing fundraiser for vox.cash, as well as Future BCH, and Unspent dot Cash. They displayed a pattern of gas-lighting and trolling that has plagued my projects since August of 2023.

This problem has gone on long enough.

Lifetime ban.

For legal and contextual reasons, I’m not going to go into listing all the sock accounts this individual maintains. Their behavior exists in a half century of sabotage, and the enforcement action should extend to their successor, so I’ll just call them “the Merc”.

“The Merc” is permanently banned from unspent, vox and FBCH, under the respective Code of Conduct for each of those projects, for a sustained multi-year pattern of malicious trolling and attempted sabotage.

While each of my projects are permissionless (there’s nothing to prevent anyone from using the protocols on-chain) the ban covers any chat or discussion, code development space, direct financial support, or financial sponsorships through partners.

Blanket amnesty for all other community members.

For all other individuals within the Bitcoin Cash community that have acted as a proxy or partner for “the Merc” to engage in malicious behavior, knowingly or unknowingly, toward emerging projects, or the space at large, we can assume that you were naively acting on behalf of a saboteur.

Just how naive, and how much good intent is assumed, is largely dependent on what folks built and how they acted in the past and going forward.

Bitcoin Cash has no gate-keepers. There’s no kings. No charters. No permissioned system of what projects can and cannot exist. There is certainly no individual or agent with such power.

The most valuable tool free people have is the power to say “No”. We get to decide who we trade with, for what kind of money, with our skills and time. I’m grateful to the adamantly independent developers and leaders in Bitcoin Cash for protecting this freedom to build without the permission of our adversaries.

If you were into Bitcoin Cash, but got sick of consistnet bad behavior, I hope to build a better space for us all with vox.