What is the Bitcoin Cash Fork?
The Bitcoin code has been activated for the Bitcoin Cash (BCH) fork.
The new forks are called BCHABC and BCHSV.
Roger Ver is in the corner of the leading Bitcoin Cash chain, now called Bitcoin ABC or BCHABC.
Craig White is the antagonist, promoting the new chain, known as Bitcoin Satoshi's Vision or BCHSV.
Bitcoin ABC (BCHABC) introduces a series of technical upgrades to the network, such as a reordering of transactions to increase block capacity as well as additional code to support greater interoperability between cryptocurrencies.
Bitcoin "Satoshi’s Vision" (BCHSV), on the other hand, rejects these changes to restore the retired code from the original bitcoin protocol which increases the block size from 32 MB to 128 MB.
You can keep up-to-date with the price of 1 BCHABC and 1 BCHSV to USD at HASH WARS. Hash wars looks at the number of Bitcoin Cash Nodes.
The chart shows the number of Bitcoin Cash Nodes running the respective implementations of the Bitcoin Cash protocol – using data provided by BlockChair. We’re not saying the creators of the site have a bias, but they appear to have made Bitcoin ABC the heroes of their adaptation, casting that team as the Rebel Alliance. The ‘compromise’ implementation, Bitcoin Unlimited, that allows miners to chose the protocol they wish to follow is currently in second place in the node count, while the ‘Imperial Forces’ of Craig White and Calvin Ayre’s Bitcoin SV are currently in 4th place.
This has become a hash war between the new forked chains with threats of sabotage by Craig White. You have two people who fervently believe in their version of how the coins should work in the future.
Wright and his company, nChain, are allied with billionaire Calvin Ayre, who runs the world’s largest Bitcoin Cash mining pool, CoinGeek. They face formidable competition from the pro-fork contingent, which includes Bitmain, the biggest mining company in the world. Bitmain and its allies can bring massive computing power to bear on forcing the fork. Even Roger Ver, the CEO at Bitcoin.com who created Bitcoin Cash from the original bitcoin split, thinks Wright and the Bitcoin Cash miners are goners. Roger Ver puts [BCHSV's] odds of winning the “hash wars” at 10:1 against.
And still, Wright won’t give up. “They will go bankrupt. I’m very happy to bankrupt them. We will bleed them,”
He has also talked about mass dumping Bitcoin (BTC) to support BCHSV as you will see below in the Bitcoin (BTC) price crash.
To all BTC miners...
If you switch to mine BCH, we may need to fund this with BTC, if we do, we sell for USD and, well... we think BTC market has no room... it tanks.
Think about it. We will sell A Lot!
Consider that....
And, have a nice day(BTC to 1000 does not phase me) pic.twitter.com/oUScEahtWc
— Dr Craig S Wright (@ProfFaustus) November 14, 2018
Vitalik Buterin, the founder of Ethereum, replied, "Craig Wright absolutely should have a voice. But so, do all of us laughing at his stupidity".
You can read more about Craig White here.
Here are 5 possible scenarios after the hard fork.
Data collected by Coin.Dance, a blockchain statistics website, found a strong majority of Bitcoin Cash mining power supported the Bitcoin SV protocol implementation. At the time of writing, approximately 75% are prepared to move to SV, with only around 20% willing to support Bitcoin ABC; the same as were willing to move onto Bitcoin Unlimited. The data also showed that among companies operating on BCH, almost all of them were willing to move onto ABC, whereas only around half would support SV.
Update Nov 21, 2018 - now the majority has swung the other way with the majority of miners mining BCHABC.
Bitcoin Cash BCHABC is currently 46.1% ahead on proof of work.
Both BCHABV and BCHSV chains are at the same block height.
Here are how the various cryptocurrency exchanges are handling the Bitcoin Cash fork.
The current war can be summed up in this thumb art below.
I may have broken the record for the most time spent on a thumbnail artwork. Watch the $BCH fork go live on the @ToneVays youtube channel #bitcoin #BitcoinCash pic.twitter.com/jlT6htKBnv
— Peter (@WorldofRusty) November 15, 2018
Why is the Bitcoin Price Crashing?
The Bitcoin price has crashed through $5,000 and now BTC sits at below $4,400 on 21st Nov, 2018.
You can see the volume spiking below in the bottom bar chart as the Bitcoin price has fell off a cliff.
What has caused the recent price fall of Bitcoin as it has fallen 20% in the last week?
Most of the drop in prices recently can be explained by the recent Bitcoin Cash fork and the hash rate wars causing mining power to be diverted away from mining Bitcoin (BTC) and toward mining Bitcoin Cash (BCHABC).
The hash rate is the amount of computing power needed to keep mining a cryptocurrency.
Over the last month, the hash rate of Bitcoin (BTC) has fallen from a high of 60 TH/s to around 43 TH/s as you can see in the monthly chart below.
The average drop in the hash rate of BTC over the last 7 days has been 14%.
Most of the drop in prices can be explained however due to the battle for the soul of Bitcoin Cash and its hash rate war. Many miners have had to divert mining power away from mining Bitcoin (BTC) and toward mining Bitcoin Cash (BCHABC or its rival, BCHSV).
According to Blockchain.com's statistics, the main backers of Bitcoin Cash (BCHABC) have lowered their mining of BTC significantly. The mining giant Antpool has halved its mining of Bitcoin, reducing the hash rate of the entire BTC network by nearly 7%. Bitcoin.com have also switched over from mining BTC to BCHABC in a battle to win the dominant Bitcoin Cash blockchain.
Bitcoin Cash SV was temporarily leading the battle, but now BCHABC has 73% of miners compared to 27% for BCHSV.
How Much is the War for Bitcoin Cash Costing Miners?
Hash war estimated costs live update
Combined totals:
* Estimated leasing fees: $8.1m
* Combined gross losses: $6.1mEven assuming cheap energy costs, SV miners have a negative gross margin of 353% & $1.4m of gross losses. @CalvinAyre @ProfFaustus cant keep this up forever. pic.twitter.com/CdTQm0vVf4
— BitMEX Research (@BitMEXResearch) November 19, 2018
Who Will Win the War?
BCHABC is backed by some of the largest mining pools and commercial miners in the world.
Even if the SV mining collation do catch up with ABC or if they manage to do hostile chain re-orgs, its highly unlikely BCash ABC users & investors will ever switch to follow SV. ABC users just need to be patient & wait it out. @CalvinAyre & the SV miners will eventually give up
— BitMEX Research (@BitMEXResearch) November 16, 2018
How do I trade in these markets?
Don't panic - eventually, this war will be over, one side will claim victory for Bitcoin Cash's soul and then the mining pools will return to mining Bitcoin (BTC) and the price will bounce back.