"Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System"

Peer to peer cash.

Not "Gold", not "asset", but "Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash".

The IRS classifies and taxes it as an asset because functionally it is an asset. The design is speculated to be based off of hashcash and maybe it was suppose to be used as cash and in a way it is still useful as "electronic cash" for online orders since wait times are less relevant.

http://www.hashcash.org/papers/hashcash.pdf

The IRS is wrong.

How so?

And obviously it doesn't matter if the law is wrong, it's still the law. But in this instance, why do you believe it to be wrong?

The IRS classifies and taxes it as an asset because functionally it is an asset. Satoshi was doing a bit of marketing with the title of his paper.

Bitcoin cash is still that.

Bitcoin Cash does indeed have very low fees... and about a tenth the transaction volume of Bitcoin proper, with few places using it, mainly just a handful of people involved in creating it.

It's certainly not as ridiculous an option as it was back before the difficulty adjustment fix when its supporters were promoting it as the fast option despite it usually taking days for transactions to confirm (supporters responding that block times were as low as a minute sometimes, and they were right... except it was a entirely bimodal distribution, with most of the time spent in the "hours per block" part).

However, the increased transaction capacity people are promoting is still about 100x its current transaction rate, and it's entirely unclear how well it'd handle scaling up by that much in practice. Especially since I'm pretty sure it lacks some of the scaling work that the original Bitcoin has. Also, the rampant dishonesty and all the attempts by sites and services owned by a guy with a major investment in it to trick people into thinking it is Bitcoin don't inspire confidence.

Bitcoin Cash has been around for 3 months. 1 tenth the volume in that time is extremely impressive given than popular services like Coinbase and Bitpay don't even support it yet.

Exactly. Price aside, the growth is insane. Things are being built. Merchants are coming back online. Within a few months the sentiment will start to change for BCH.

For those who don't know, Bitcoin forked into 1 "new" Bitcoin (kept the name, changed the model from currency to speculative asset), and 2 Bitcoin Cash, that continued development along the original crypto-currency design.

https://www.investopedia.com/tech/bitcoin-vs-bitcoin-cash-wh...

Indeed, what part of the name "cryptocurrency" would lead someone to believe it to be like cash?

Currency A currency in the most specific use of the word refers to money in any form when in actual use or circulation as a medium of exchange, especially circulating banknotes and coins. A more general definition is that a currency is a system of money (monetary units) in common use, especially in a nation. Under this definition, British pounds, U.S. dollars, and European euros are examples of currency.

Wikipedia

Yes, a "currency" should be treated as an asset, not cash.

The pro-BTC arguments are becoming absolutely inane

To me it sounds like an admission that Bitcoin doesn't work too well as a currency.

It's classic goalpost-moving.

AKA pivoting.

Currency A currency in the most specific use of the word refers to money in any form when in actual use or circulation as a medium of exchange, especially circulating banknotes and coins. A more general definition is that a currency is a system of money (monetary units) in common use, especially in a nation. Under this definition, British pounds, U.S. dollars, and European euros are examples of currency.

Wikipedia

Stores-of-value aren't "actually used" nor "medium of exchange". Bitcoin Cash fixes Bitcoin, restoring its utility and will cannibalize Bitcoin's market share.

I can take my maple leave or krugerrand and change that in any crash for gold/western union/money exchange shed for almost market rate in minutes. There are plenty of them. Even I take a cap that is its faster and cheaper than bitcoin.

I can take my seed words inside my brain through airport security.

Let's not get started on verification of the asset!