The war between the two opposing groups of Bitcoin Cash, ahead of the upcoming fork, had been suspected to have a direct relationship with the severe crypto prices losses.
As of now, the fights have been taken to the next level: both parties – Bitcoin ABC and Bitcoin SV – threatened each other that they would sell some of their BTC as well as move their hash power from mining Bitcoin (BTC) to mine Bitcoin Cash (BCH).
“To all BTC miners… If you switch to mine BCH, we may need to fund this with BTC; if we do, we sell for USD and, well… we think BTC market has no room… it tanks. Think about it. We will sell A Lot! Consider that… And, have a nice day (BTC to 1000 does not phase me),” Bitcoin SV Craig Wright tweeted today around 6 pm (CET). About an hour before his tweet, the severe drop in the Bitcoin’s value has initiated.
“Oh. And @JihanWu and @rogerkver selling… they will also have to sell BTC to pay rented hash. If this is a long war… expect 2014 prices in BTC… think what that does… Have a nice day,” Wright added, threatening Bitcoin.com CEO Roger Ver and Bitmain co-founder Jihan Wu.
There’s also another tweet from an unverified source claiming about Jihan Wu’s threats. Here is the translated version:
“I have no intention to start a hash war with CSW [Craig S. Wright] because if I do (by relocating hash power from BTC mining to BCH mining), BTC price will dump below yearly support; it may even reach $5000. But since CSW is relentless, I am all in to fight till death.”
Soon after Bitcoin ABC developer, Amaury Sechet has proposed its solution to upgrade the Bitcoin Cash network in July 2018; the BCH community had split into two opposing parties. Sechet’s proposal included the introduction of the idea of pre-consensus to the Bitcoin Cash network. Pre-consensus would allow network participants to agree with each other on what the next block will look like. According to Sechet and his fellow Bitcoin ABC developers, the upgrade would allow the network to scale better and would significantly improve the guarantee of zero-confirmation transactions.
Craig Wright, the person who some believed to be Satoshi Nakamoto, was one of the first to oppose Bitcoin ABC’s solution and came up with a proposal of his own called the “Satoshi Vision” (Bitcoin SV). Bitcoin SV is a more conservative approach to the November 15 BCH hardfork as the proposal suggests returning to Bitcoin’s origins (as it was in the original whitepaper) – except for a 128 Mb block size upgrade.
As both parties have threatened each other (and the whole crypto community) by either re-routing hash power from BTC to BCH or selling their Bitcoin reserves, it creates a question: can either of this affect the crypto markets?
As we witness the falling prices, the short answer is yes. Turning a large amount of hash power to one coin to another would unbalance the network.
“Converting these massive amounts of hash power could easily affect some algorithms/trading bots in the market. I am assuming that Bitmain could be turning the 90k miners offline or getting ready to switch them to BCH if Bitmain interferes. Additionally, any institutions in BCH or BTC are probably pulling our short-term for things to calm down,” user apollo74 stated on CryptoPanic.
Currently, according to Coin Dance, the Bitcoin SV party seems to be winning over with an estimated 69-75% of the miners backing the upgrade, while Bitcoin ABC’s supporters are estimated between 13 – 25%.
As always, some speculations are around Tether, where it’s value has unreasonable volatility, where its current lowest price was even $0.97, and right now it’s traded for $0.98.
While it’s not for sure the cause, by looking at the 24-hour change BTC had lost nearly 10 percent of its value, while Bitcoin Cash has experienced even more severe wounds with a price drop of 16 percent against the USD. Almost all cryptocurrencies are affected.