Bitcoin is a protocol not a ticker symbol.

Wrong statement. Both btc and bsv are forks. But the latter just follows the whitepaper while btc core introduced anti-patterns like block size or segwit.

I'm confused, I thought Bitcoin XT was the one following the white paper. Or maybe it was Bitcoin classic. Or Bitcoin unlimited. But Bitcoin Cash was supposed to be the true one. Or BSV as you're saying. Or it was of course Bitcoin Gold.

I guess a requirement for being the one following the white paper is to take part of a fork with the Bitcoin "Core" chain.

Bitcoin XT is a an old client, not a chain.

Bitcoin Unlimited is a group of developers, not a chain.

Bitcoin Gold doesn't even use the same hash algo, is an unrelated airdrop.

There are only 3 sha256 Bitcoin forks. BTC, BCH, BSV

BTC ticker symbol does not mean it is "the original", it means it was most popular among exchanges at the time of the fork.

BCH was a demonstration of Bitcoin's resilience. When devs tried to alter the protocol in a way that was very controversial, the network forked.

BCH most closely resembled Bitcoin as defined by its' white-paper at that time.

Eventually BCH devs also made controversial changes, and guess what? Bitcoin forked again. Shocker. Bitcoin survives by design.

What I find fascinating is how many people think fundamentally altering it should be acceptable, even though it is the most obvious attack vector.