Given the structural findings documented in the corpus, the choice of base layer is not a preference. It is the consequence of the requirements. This document states the requirements, applies them to the three chains, and arrives at the conclusion that follows.
Deviant builds tools and assets that depend on Bitcoin operating as Bitcoin was specified to operate. The specifics of the asset categories, the wallet, and the broader ecosystem are documented separately in the architecture and product documents. For the purposes of this document, what matters is the structural requirement that ties all the components together: Deviant's components require a base layer that preserves the load-bearing properties the Bitcoin whitepaper specifies.
This is not a marketing position. It is a technical requirement. Several of the structural mechanisms Deviant relies on cannot operate coherently on a base layer that allows transaction replacement after the fact, has structurally disabled the original SPV verification model, has dissolved the relationship between on-chain supply and tradeable supply through derivative-mediated synthetic claims, or has introduced witness-segregation architecture that makes the original §2 coin-as-chain-of-signatures property non-binding at the protocol level. The choice of base layer is determined by what the components require to function, not by the brand identity attached to any particular chain.
The work this document does is short: state those requirements explicitly, apply them to the three chains in the Bitcoin lineage, and document which chain meets them. The supporting analysis for each chain's relationship to the whitepaper is in the corpus's other documents. This document does not re-litigate those findings; it applies them.
Deviant's components depend on five structural properties of the base layer. Each property maps to a specific section of the whitepaper and a specific operational consequence. Each requirement is named with the consequence that follows from its absence.
These five requirements are not arbitrary preferences. They are the conditions under which the components Deviant is building can operate coherently. A bearer-instrument asset cannot be redeemed for a different asset that the network later decides to reissue at the same address. A payment system cannot function when payments can be replaced after the recipient has shipped the goods. A privacy-preserving application cannot promise users a privacy model that the protocol does not support. The requirements come from what the components are, not from a stylistic preference for any particular chain.
The three chains in the Bitcoin lineage in 2026 are BTC, BSV, and BCH. The corpus's documentary work establishes each chain's relationship to the whitepaper. Mapped against the five requirements above, the picture is direct.
The reading the table produces is direct. BTC fails on four of five requirements, with the four failures being protocol-level departures from the whitepaper that the chain's development direction has institutionalized over years. BSV meets two requirements fully and two partially, but fails on §10 in a manner that is not a user-experience gap — it is a deliberate reframing by the project's central interpretive frame, documented in the BSV companion. BCH meets four requirements fully and the fifth (§10) partially, with the partial position being a user-experience gap that wallet improvements can close without protocol changes.
The asymmetry between BCH's §10 partial and BSV's §10 failure is structural and worth noting. BCH's protocol supports fresh keys per transaction; default wallet UX has not yet been built to enforce this discipline by default, but the protocol is not opposed to it. BSV's project materials explicitly reframe the §10 specification as an audit-friendly transparency feature, positioning compliance monitoring as a design intent of Bitcoin. The first is a gap that better tooling can close. The second is a redefinition of what the chain is supposed to be.
Of the three chains in the Bitcoin lineage, BCH is the only one that meets enough of the structural requirements that Deviant's components can operate coherently on it. The choice is not a preference. It is a constraint imposed by what Deviant is building.
BTC fails on too many load-bearing requirements. A bearer-instrument architecture cannot operate on a chain that allows transaction replacement until confirmation. A privacy-preserving application cannot operate on a chain that has degraded the §10 mechanism through Taproot's aggregated-key direction. A high-volume payment application cannot operate on a chain whose policy direction has been to route ordinary transactions to custodial layer-2 networks. The structural departures BTC has undergone are not minor — they are the substance of the changes Vol.13 documents at length.
BSV's chain-level capacity is real and its protocol-level non-reversibility holds. The project's engineering work on Teranode is real. But the interpretive frame the project has built around the chain — the framing of Bitcoin as an audit-friendly registry operating within the rule of law, with miner-court compliance positioned as a design feature — describes a different system than the whitepaper specifies. A project building tools for an application stack that depends on §1's non-reversibility being structural rather than contingent on miner cooperation cannot rest on a base layer whose authoritative interpretive frame explicitly positions miner-court compliance as a feature. The technical chain may be sound; the interpretive ecosystem around it is structurally incompatible with what Deviant's components require.
BCH retains the structural properties the whitepaper specifies at the protocol level. The §10 user-experience gap is addressable through wallet improvements within the existing protocol. The on-chain capacity is sufficient. The verification architecture is intact. The supply-to-tradeable-supply relationship has not been dissolved through derivative-mediated leverage at the BTC scale. The chain's identity is aligned with the protocol's specifications, not in tension with them. Deviant's components can operate on BCH; they cannot operate coherently on the other two.
This conclusion is not a marketing claim. It is a structural finding produced by applying the requirements to the available options. A different project with different requirements might arrive at a different conclusion. A project building for institutional custody on regulated platforms might find BTC's properties adequate. A project building for enterprise data-ledger applications might find BSV's properties adequate. Deviant's specific requirements — bearer-instrument architecture, peer-to-peer settlement without trusted-third-party intermediation, privacy-preserving operation, application-volume capacity at base-layer-economical fees — are met only on BCH.
If, at some point in the future, BCH ceases to meet these requirements through protocol changes that depart from the whitepaper, the same analysis applied at that time would produce a different conclusion. The conclusion is contingent on the chain continuing to be what the documentary record currently establishes it to be. The discipline of the analysis — apply the requirements to the available options, accept the conclusion that follows — is what produces the answer, not the answer itself.
The four-category reading companion document names the perception gap directly: BCH is the chain most aligned with the whitepaper, and is also the chain whose perception lags furthest behind its reality. For most observers in 2026, the dominant framing positions BTC as Bitcoin's continuation and BCH as a departure. The historical record documents how that framing was constructed.
For Deviant, this perception gap is both the problem and the opportunity. The problem: building on a base layer most users do not yet perceive as the chain most consistent with the whitepaper means working against the inertia of the captured discourse. The opportunity: the discrepancy between BCH's structural properties and BCH's perceived position is exactly the kind of gap that surfaces over time as users encounter the limits of the alternatives. Deviant's role is to build tools that operate on the reality, and to allow the perception to catch up to the reality through what the tools enable users to do.
The analysis above rests on documentary work that is not reproduced here. Readers who wish to verify the substrate the conclusions depend on will find it in the corpus's other documents.
The documentary substrate is the work. This document is the application of the substrate to a specific question — why Deviant builds on BCH. The reader who accepts the substrate accepts the conclusion that follows from it. The reader who does not accept the substrate has the longer documents available to investigate the underlying claims and arrive at their own assessment.