The Bitcoin Cash war escalated over the weekend, as the miners who hold the key to the success of the forked projects began to show their allegiances. While the leaders of the competing chains turned up the marketing and the aggression. With the fork just three days away, each side is making last-ditch efforts to woo miners and supporters are looking for any evidence that their camp will emerge victorious.
Satoshi’s Vision on the Attack
Statistics gathered by Coin Dance before the weekend projected that Bitcoin SV (BCHSV), the vision of Craig Wright and supported by mining giant Coingeek, was winning the hash rate war. According to reports, BCHSV has the backing of at least 45% of miners and around 60% of the current hash rate. Grenades were thrown on social media over the weekend, principally from Craig Wright who launched into a prolonged series of attacks on Bitcoin Cash ABC (BCHABC), as well as sending an abusive email to Bitcoin Cash co-creator Roger Ver, warning him not to support the ABC version.
Responses came from Ver in the form of a YouTube video and ABC proponent Jihan Wu on Twitter before Wright appeared on well-known Bitcoin trader Tone Vays’ show to discuss the upcoming fork. On the show, he revealed that a number of miners had already pledged their allegiance to BCHSV, news that prompted a jump in support, with 62% of miners backing it and a 53% hash rate as of Monday morning.
Bitmain Strengthens its Defenses
A BCHSV victory wouldn’t just be bad news for BCHABC, it could be terminal. The owner of the biggest hash rate in the mining pool has the ability to ‘kill’ the minority currency by mining empty blocks on it, rendering it unable to process transactions and making it therefore useless.
Bitmain, who have pinned their colors to the BCHABC mast, are preparing for such an attack by readying an extra 90,000 Antminer S9 ASICs ahead of the fork in order to boost BCHABC production if required. What a complete BCHABC defeat would mean for Bitmain’s IPO is unknown.
Supporters Let Their (Futures) Cash Do the Talking
On Sunday night, the Poloniex exchange listed both BCHABC and BCHSV coins on their futures platform, which will allow investor opinions to be known alongside those of the miners, and it has made for interesting reading so far. In ten hours of trading, BCHABC has dipped 20% to $358 while BCHSV has gained 14% to $119, seeming to echo the sentiment of the miners.
At this point, Wu and his team will have performed a mighty turnaround in order to secure a victory for BCHABC by Thursday, but if there’s anything we should expect in cryptocurrency, it’s the unexpected.
