At Bitcoin Cash Birthday Bash, Crypto Embraces the Strange

Amid a floorshow of acrobats, cross-dressers and samurai dwarves, gambling pioneer turned cryptocurrency advocate Calvin Ayer boomed, “This is a great moment in the history of money.”

It might sound a bit nonsensical, but it was far from fiction at a bitcoin cash birthday party in London last week, where a circus-meets-gypsy-themed party gathered the cryptocurrency’s local enthusiasts in celebration of the one-year anniversary of its first block.

As the party proved, the block was a big one – not just in its 8 MB size, but for the crypto history books, so much so that a year later the memory of its birth remains.

So, too, however, does the controversy around the project, which while still one of the world’s largest (securing $10.2 billion in value), continues to have an acrimonious relationship with those backing the blockchain from which it split.

Today, bitcoin cash boasts 32 MB blocks (compared to bitcoin’s roughly 1 MB blocks), which according to enthusiasts at the…