It is looking increasingly likely that a hashing war will break out between the Bitcoin ABC and Bitcoin SV protocols during the 15th November hard fork. According to the latest data on Coin Dance, they estimate that at least 62% – and up to 72% – of current BCH hash power is supporting the Bitcoin SV protocol.
Hash war over?
CoinDance now says Bitcoin SV has backing of at least 45% and at most 60% of the current hash rate. ABC is estimated at 21% minimum, and at most 39% maximum of current hash rate.
— Calvin Ayre (@CalvinAyre) November 10, 2018
Community vs hash rate
Gambling industry billionaire and BCH miner Calvin Ayre looks set to have thrown his hash rate behind Craig Wright’s Bitcoin SV chain. He announced on Twitter that “Coin Dance now says Bitcoin SV has the backing of at least 45% and at most 60% of the current hash rate. ABC is estimated at 21% minimum and at most 39% maximum of current hash rate”.
On the other hand, it seems the majority of the community are siding with the ABC protocol. Looking at Coin Dance’s community support list we see that more than 70% of companies surveyed, explicitly support or are ready for the Bitcoin ABC roadmap. This figure rises above 98% when you include Coin Dance weightings.
BitMEX has also announced that the “BCHZ18 contract will settle at a price on the Bitcoin ABC side of any split and will NOT include the value of Bitcoin SV”. It would be interesting to see what would happen to this contract if the Bitcoin SV chain wins. This could cause the BCHZ18 contract to trade towards zero on Bitmex.
Bitmain has vast reserves of sha-256 hash power and more than a million BCH coins. This could be brought into play if a hashing or exchange war erupts. Calvin Ayre doesn’t seem too concerned at the moment as he boasted on Twitter that “anyone running Bitmains ABC will not be mining much after Nov 17th”. He went on to say that Jihan’s only solution will be “to switch and mine Bitcoin SV”.
Could BTC miners have a part to play?
Bitcoin miners (BTC) use the same hashing algorithm as the BCH blockchain (Sha-256). This means we may see groups of miners (who only care about highest profitability) switch over hash rate from the BTC chain and point it towards one of the Bitcoin SV or Bitcoin ABC chains. At the current prices and mining difficulty of the respective BCH and BTC blockchains, it is currently 1.22x more profitable to mine BTC.
If we see the price of either SV or ABC spike at the time of the fork, you may see miners switch hash power to the most profitable chain (Regardless of political loyalties)
At the time of writing the market is still currently trading heavily in favour of the ABC chain, with the respective prices for BCH, BCH-ABC and BCH-SV trading at $516, $404 and $113 respectively.
https://coinrivet.com/your-guide-to-the-tools-youll-need-to-monitor-the-bitcoin-cash-hard-fork/
Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed by the author should not be considered as financial advice. We do not give advice on financial products.