The price of Bitcoin Cash (BCH) has risen by about 15% in the last 24 hours. This growth is due to the fork, coming next November 15, which will be supported by several exchanges.
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Bitcoin Cash (BCH) fork
What has fueled this growth is the announcement by large exchanges such as Binance and Coinbase that they intend to support the fork. In reality, the announcement of Binance does not clarify whether they intend to maintain support for both the chains that will be created or only for the one that has the highest hash rate. Coinbase has specified that it will only support the one proposed on bitcoincash.org.
BCH routinely runs a hard fork every six months. The 15 November fork is a bit different from the usual one because the developers didn’t agree on this upgrade and there is the risk (almost a certainty) that two separate chains will originate, both supported by many developers. The community can break down.
At the time I write 1 BCH is worth about $550 according to CoinMarketCap.
Bitcoin Cash: forking Bitcoin in its father’s condition
It’s ironic that Bitcoin Cash, born from a rib of Bitcoin due to differing opinions among developers (especially on how to solve scalability problems), is now in the same condition as its father.
Developers from two different groups disagree on how to proceed with some software and protocol upgrades. There are basically two factions: the dominant one is Bitcoin ABC, supported by Bitmain, and the developer pool that led the Bitcoin fork giving rise to Bitcoin Cash.
According to bitcoincash.org, the upgrade will be compatible with:
- Bitcoin ABC 0.18.2
- Bitcoin Unlimited Cash Edition 1.5.0.0
- bcoin – bcash 1.1.0 (to be released)
The other faction is led by Craig Wright who intends to focus more on the greater privacy of transactions. ABC opts for Canonical Transaction and Sign Data Verify, while the group that now supports SV said “no” and proposed its alternative roadmap (reactivate the old OP Codes of Satoshi and continue to increase the block limit). Craig Wright has not found a compromise with the developers of Bitcoin ABC and has decided to continue on his way.
During the November fork, the majority of the hash rate must change the node (the previous version of BitcoinABC that had 90% of the hash rate of miners is made to stop working in case of an upgrade). The solution mode of the diatribe is simply the Nakamoto Consensus: the branch with the most work (PoW) will be the one that will determine who of the two groups will win. The group with the minority hash rate will still be able to carry on with the minority chain, or it will be able to reunite with the majority and continue with the majority rules.
There is a difference of opinion over which faction will prevail and it is not easy to guess: they could also survive both.
The Price Surge
The support of a fork depends in fact on the miners: if they decide not to support it, it will die gradually. If, however, the miners were divided fairly, they could, as mentioned, survive both chains. Investors who are holding (or buying these days) BCH will receive an equivalent amount of tokens from both chains. That’s why the price goes up: many investors are buying BCH waiting for the fork. BCH volumes are clearly growing, today, for example, it is the most traded asset on Bitfinex.
If both chains survive it could be a great opportunity to earn something in a bearish market for some time.
It is clear that if there is a split, the new tokens, according to many people will be called BSV, could soon be sold en masse on the exchanges that will support them. Similarly, after obtaining the BSV tokens many traders will close their positions by selling BCH. Also, consider that there are very big players in this dispute: Bitmain owns 1 million BCH and therefore could have very soon 1 million BSV: what will it do with it?