LATEST: ABC Chain is three blocks ahead after SV briefly took the lead

Bitcoin ABC has found 21 blocks so far with the SV chain now three blocks behind as the Bitcoin Cash fork took another dramatic turn.

The ABC chain got off to a good start and had a four-block lead. That was soon cut and SV even went one block ahead. This was then followed by a flurry of blocks from ABC to retake the lead.

ABC is also ahead in hash rate, they have around 4.12 exahashes/ second compared to 3.74 exhashes for SV (estimated by hashwar.live). SV did start out with a major hashing lead (around 70%) but it seems like it is now bringing more miners online.

The pace has been a steady six blocks an hour. This in on target but slightly more than the average of 4.5 blocks over the last six hours.

We have also not seen many blocks found from the largest BCH mining pool – Coingeek

Whalepanda tweeted out: “It’s interesting that the @RealCoinGeek pool hasn’t mined a block yet despite having 40%+ of the hashrate before the split. So either they’re shadow mining or they messed up something.”

The shadow mining could relate to a covertly directing hash power to mine the ABC chain (with different transactions) for a possible re-org attack.

We may not have to wait too long to see if this is true, the longer the chain gets ahead the more work will need to be done to re-org it (so it has to potentially go back to the first block).

Fork markets/exchanges

SV: $100 – Trading at one third the price of the ABC client, looks like the price is heading up.

ABC: $283 – ABC was trading above $330 a while ago, but the price looks to be now heading down.

BCH: $400 – Price has been falling in the last few hours, still a lot of confusion towards the winner of this chain. Trading and transactions are suspended on most exchanges.

BTC: $5,662 – Bitcoin price is still up from the dump down to $5,432 on Bitfinex.