TD;LR
It has been four days since the Bitcoin Cash upgrade that has led to a hard fork, and the hash war between BCH and newly-founded BSV continues. As many are already aware of, Bitcoin Cash’ blockchain split in two due to the disagreement between the two major camps of BCH community — Bitcoin ABC and nChain.
As a result, the two blockchains are now fighting for dominance, with Bitcoin Cash ABC version currently winning the hash war with 61% of total hash power on its side. Bitcoin Cash Satoshi Vision (BSV) currently only has 39%. While initially unwilling to participate in the hash war, Bitcoin ABC supporter and co-founder of Bitmain, Jihan Wu, eventually entered anyway.
He stated that the war will relocate the hash power from mining Bitcoin to mining Bitcoin Cash, which is why Bitcoin price will drop significantly. This was already witnessed during the previous week, with Bitcoin losing over $1,000 in value, and dropping to $5,300. As for nChain’s leading researcher that started the “BSV rebellion”, Craig Wright, he made numerous aggressive moves and statements, even going as far as to claim that he is Satoshi Nakamoto, Bitcoin’s original creator.
While the two opposing sides continue to work against one another, several cryptocurrency exchanges have announced that BSV trading is already available. Most notable ones to do so already are Bittrex and Poloniex.
In a recent statement published only hours ago, Bittrex has noted that BSV deposits and withdrawals are open. However, deposits are temporarily limited to 20, and BCH/BSV cross-chain deposits will not be credited.
It is believed that it is only a matter of time before other exchanges join in and list BSV as well, despite the fact that the hash war is still on-going.
As the situation continues to unfold, the crypto community is speculating about the real reason behind these events. Aiming to find some explanation for the current chaotic events, many came to various conclusions. Most of them revolve around the possibility of price manipulation of Bitcoin.
Numerous Reddit posts claim that the Bitcoin Cash situation was artificially caused so that Bitcoin would suffer major damage. The alleged reasons behind this are the fact that Bakkt is about to arrive, and a possibility of Bitcoin ETFs being approved soon. Even if only one of these events comes to pass, the Bitcoin ecosystem will see a massive increase in money.
In this scenario, Bitcoin will likely skyrocket just like it did last year, and a lot of people, including entire wealthy families from around the world, wish to take advantage of it. As a result, they paid Wright to push the market into an unstable and chaotic couple of days, while they obtain all the BTC they can, or so the theory goes.
If true, then the Bitcoin price manipulation is the sole reason behind the market crash. While there is no evidence to confirm this, a large part of the crypto community seems to agree with the theory. At the very least, it makes sense to them. Whether or not it is true, however, still remains to be seen.