The cryptocurrency sector is never short of excitement and controversy. All stakeholders in crypto, be it traders, those with long-term investments, crypto gambling, and others, eagerly follow these developments. The most prominent Bitcoin fork, Bitcoin Cash, is set for yet another hard fork. This Bitcoin Cash (BCH) hard fork is slated to go through on November 15, 2020.
This development has a tinge of irony that is impossible to escape. Not even the best Bitcoin gambling games could capture such flipping of the script. The best crypto games have a level of coherence and structure that Bitcoin Cash (BCH) seems to be losing. BCH was supposed to be the solution to Bitcoin but has had its problems.
Bitcoin Cash was meant to be the scalable Bitcoin with more focus on the role of a medium of exchange that Bitcoin founder, Satoshi Nakamoto, intended. Roger Ver was a prominent voice in the Bitcoin community who led the Bitcoin Cash split from Bitcoin in 2017. The fork came after a faction led by Roger disagreed with the rest of the Bitcoin community over proposed changes to Bitcoin’s block size. Always colourful, the controversy will always follow Ver and his actions.
Bitcoin cash(BCH) has not become the competitor to Bitcoin that the likes of Ver hoped. A year later, Bitcoin Cash also had a hard fork leading to Bitcoin SV, and the saga is about to get another twist.
A Bit of Background: Bitcoin Cash (BCH) Hard Fork
There is always controversy about the true flag bearer of Satoshi’s vision for Bitcoin. This tag is great for clout because Nakamoto, though mysterious, is largely revered for his decentralisation and trustless transactions ideals.
Amaury Séchet’s (a BCH developer) and his camp seem to have other ideas within the Bitcoin Cash community. They differ from the rest of the BCH community as to the direction of the coin. BCH was to emphasise cryptocurrency as a medium of exchange for instantaneous, low-cost transactions.
This is not the bone of contention. The differences arise in the architectural changes to the blockchain, which align with this ideal.
Séchet leads the Bitcoin ABC camp, which is credited with creating the mining node in BCH. This mining node has gained praise within the BCH community, including creating a foundational architecture for future developments.
Another implementation, the BCHN, is in Roger’s camp. His personality, despite the controversy, was vital in giving BCH popularity and notoriety. Publicity is good, even though controversial means. If you know anything about odds, whether through crypto gambling games like Bitcoin Crash or other ways, there is a greater likelihood of people taking action to research anything once they hear of it. To this end, Roger has been an asset to BCH.
BCHN also favours technological upgrades at a lesser pace than Sechet’s implementation. The differences in node implementation of upgrades like Merklix-based sharding and adaptive block size have led to simmering tensions. These tensions finally boiled over with the proposed hard fork.
Bitcoin Cash Hard Fork
What led to the imminent fork was a blockchain-wide update of the BCH Difficulty Adjustment Algorithm (DAA) to a new algorithm called ASERT. This update was suggested by two developers, Jonathan Toomin and Mark Lundeberg.
Sechet’s camp wanted to employ an algorithm called GRASBERG instead of this update. The algorithm is similar to ASERT only because it fixes a historical drift. Soon enough, Ver’s camp reacted to the move with consternation. Their concern was that BCH was not giving Toomin credit for the update and had not consulted before announcing that they would introduce Grasberg.
Unfortunately, the disagreements only escalated to the extent that they triggered a Bitcoin Cash (BCH) Hard Fork. In Sechet’s upgrade, all newly mined blocks have to abide by the Coinbase rule, which entails that newly mined blocks must contain an output assigning 8 per cent of the newly mined coins to a specified address.
There are legitimate ideological differences that have fueled the split. However, the personal differences between the two main protagonists in this saga cannot be overlooked.
Implications of The Split: BCH Fork
Bitcoin Cash (BCH Hard Fork) is still likely to retain much of its reputation as the bigger and more legitimate project after the fork. BCH Hard Fork is a significant entity in the exchange markets.
As such, exchanges have put in place preparatory measures in anticipation of this event. A few major exchanges have indicated that they will support this fork, while others, like Coinbase, are yet to comment at press time.
This cryptocurrency sector is awaiting this fork with keen interest. For gamers, the development will also be significant. Those who have assets in BCH, there are going to be airdropped once the fork is complete. Besides, one may want to monitor any price movements.
At approximately 11:00 am UTC, BC.Game will pause BCH deposits and withdrawals.
BC.Game does not support the Bitcoin Cash (BCH) Hard Fork. However, we do value our community’s trust in us, and hence we will credit the users with a similar value of USDT as in their BCH wallet at BC.Game. This will ensure the safety of your funds!
