Why the Bitcoin Cash hard fork has been a resounding success

As the future of the Bitcoin Cash chain remains a mystery, one thing is for sure, the hard fork has been a hit.

It hasn’t necessarily been a success in terms of the technical side of the fork, with the hash war still raging on, but it has led to the demise of Bitcoin Cash and all of the bad actors associated with it, a positive step for the cryptocurrency space.

Bitcoin Cash is essentially a centralised version of Bitcoin, run by the likes of Roger Ver, Craig Wright and Jihan Wu. Ver is the marketing machine behind Bitcoin.com, a site that has vehemently claimed that Bitcoin Cash is the real Bitcoin in a brazen attempt to fool unsuspecting retail investors.

Wright, on the other hand, is a different breed of machine. The self-proclaimed doctor claims to be Satoshi Nakamoto, although this has never been verified. Wright is on the Bitcoin Cash SV side of the fork, while Ver and Wu, CEO of crypto mining company Bitmain, have pledged their allegiance to Bitcoin Cash ABC.

Ver wrote an appropriate response to the fiasco on Sunday, stating that: “No one wins a war. Some just lose less than others.”

His statement certainly holds legitimacy when looking at BitMEX research figures, which suggest that each side has amassed millions in losses since the start of the fork.

BitMEX wrote: “If one assumes the hashrate is leased, we estimate the protagonists have spent $6.7m in leasing fees since the split, generating combined gross losses of $4.6m. It is only a matter of time until this pointless battle ends.”

The eventual winner of the war is ultimately pointless. Bitcoin Cash has always been viewed as in a pejorative sense by much of the crypto space, so why would a war between three egomaniacs who strive for centralisation make any difference?

If anything, the moment Bitcoin Cash SV or Bitcoin Cash ABC go live on an exchange, the price may well plummet. Cryptocurrency was born through the notion of self-sovereignty and decentralisation and, unfortunately, Bitcoin Cash represents neither of those.

The ideal scenario is for Wu, Ver, Wright and even Calvin Ayre to realise the cost of this pointless hard fork and subsequent war, and hopefully that will act as a catalyst to switch mining back to the far more profitable Bitcoin, leaving Bitcoin Cash and its prodigies by the wayside.