Bitcoin Cash Splits, Again

Bitcoin Cash has historically been the epicentre of crypto drama, and this November 15th was no exception.

Previous reference implementation Bitcoin ABC was denied a number of controversial changes, as miners switched to the BCHN node going forward. The newly created chain, labelled BCHA on Coingecko, is currently trading at $12.28 – around 5% of the price of Bitcoin ABC’s former home.

It does appear all but certain that BCHN will retain the BCH ticker moving on forward, as most exchanges, including Binance and Coinbase have declared that the chain with the highest amount of PoW done on it will keep the Bitcoin Cash name. Coinbase were even confident in this outcome before the actual fork occurred:

“Coinbase will run BCHN nodes and expects that it will be the dominant chain post fork. Note: Any BCH ABC sent after the fork will be treated as an unsupported asset and therefore irrecoverable. Coinbase will not support the withdrawals of BCH ABC after the upgrade.”

Popular BCH public figure Justin Bons declared the event to be “an overwhelming victory for BCH today, removing a lead development team gone rogue.”

Apart from the positivity in the BCHN camp, it is important to note that, by forking into two different chains once again, the group behind the BCH ticker has lost one of its most influential entrepreneurs – Vin Armani, as well as superstar developer Tobias Ruck, with perhaps more to follow. Their main initial goal – making a clear statement that block rewards should not be redistributed – has been accomplished, but further ones going forward do not look as specific. The work on building a growing and ever improving node implementation has just begun.

Meanwhile, at camp BCHA, the mining situation appears dire, as it takes hours to find a block – and even more importantly, the chain can become an easy target of a 51% attack. While terms such as “hash war” are not relevant with this particular split, rogue miners certainly have an opportunity to abuse BCHA’s poor security model.

However, an organised attack from the main chain appears unlikely. Despite the usual Twitter drama that follows contentious forks, the one that just occurred can easily be branded “the most gentlemanly”. BCHA themselves have taken the high ground instead of latching onto opportunities to troll – for example by giving away the bitcoincash.org domain name.