Bitcoin Cash investors enjoyed a profitable weekend, with the coin jumping 35% ahead of a contentious hard fork on November 15. However, this fork has seen founding members Craig Wright and Jihan Wu trade verbal blows. Popular exchange Binance announced support for the fork Friday, which resulted in an immediate jump, followed by a prolonged increase over the weekend, during which Coinbase also announced their support.
Scaling the Issue
Bitcoin Cash famously originated in August 2017 following a long-running argument on the best way to scale Bitcoin, and it has taken little over a year for the combative heads of the forked currency to fall out between themselves over the same issue. One group, Bitcoin ABC, wants to make several changes to the code that would allow Bitcoin Cash to be more scalable and usable, as well as paving the way for non-cash transactions on its blockchain. They also want to keep the existing 32MB block size. Bitcoin ABC are backed by Jihan Wu, founder of cryptocurrency mining giant Bitmain who control 22% of the Bitcoin Cash mining power.
Opposing Bitcoin ABC are nChain, headed by Craig Wright, who are against the idea of non-cash transactions and want to increase the block size to 128MB. nChain are supported by another mining giant, Coingeek, who control 25% of Bitcoin Cash’s mining power. nChain have developed a new version of Bitcoin Cash called Satoshi’s Vision (SV), which would be the forked coin if the split goes ahead.
Miners Hold the Key
Bitmain and Coingeek between them make up 47% of the total Bitcoin Cash hashing power, with the 53% majority seemingly yet to decide where their loyalties lie. Naturally, where these miners decide to point their equipment come November 15 will be key to the success of the newly forked currencies. For that reason, plenty of debate is expected as Bitcoin ABC and nChain try to get the majority on their side. While we don’t know yet who will win out, we can certainly expect more fireworks than the Fourth of July in the coming days.
