Bitcoin Cash Becomes the Longest Chain As Miners Toggle Between Profits

The Bitcoin Cash (BCH) network is almost a month old and seemingly growing stronger as the days continue. As of August 22, the BCH chain is longer than BTC’s blockchain by 959 blocks, while also capturing the most hashrate that day for a short period of time. Also read: SEC Suspends Trading of Bitcoin Firm’s Shares After 7000% Price Jump

Miners Continue to Bounce Back and Forth Between Chains Chasing Profitability

The BCH chain continues its voyage as it’s processed 4385 blocks mined since the hard fork on August 1. Currently, there are six known mining pools processing BCH blocks including BTC.top, Viabtc, Pool.Bitcoin.com, F2Pool, Antpool, and BTC.com. There are also three “unknown” miners who capture roughly 19 percent of the BCH network hashrate. Earlier this week, it became more profitable to mine BTC as the BCH mining difficulty adjusted higher. However, on August 24, the BCH blockchain experienced multiple drops in difficulty and now operates at 10% of the legacy chain’s difficulty. Hashrate between both chains has had an interesting relationship as BTC and BCH miners have been bouncing back and forth between difficulty adjustments. On August 22, the BCH protocol surpassed the entire BTC hashrate for a short period, and now the legacy chain’s hashpower is only one exahash higher.

Downward Difficulty Drops and New Infrastructure Announcements

At the time of writing, BTC has a hashrate capturing roughly 4.3 exahash per second, while the BCH hashrate is 3.2 exahash. The reason miners have been jumping around chasing profitability, is because of BCH’s median time difficulty drops significantly compared to bitcoin’s difficulty recalculating every 2016 blocks. However, bitcoin’s price has spiked quite a bit, and mining on the BCH chain is only 5 percent more profitable to mine. BCH supporters have also seen some more infrastructure support for the network, as last week the Blockchain startup announced wallets would have an extraction tool shortly. Further, the social media startup the Yours network revealed they were switching from litecoin to BCH. Additionally, other projects are in the works like a bitcoin cash-based paper wallet generator, and the new Exodus wallet (Eden) announced it would support BCH.

Nchain and Craig Wright Deny Being Involved With Bitcoin Cash

In addition to the BCH chain’s achievements over the past few weeks Nchain’s chief scientist, Craig Wright, recently applauded the efforts set forth by bitcoin cash developers. Moreover Wright and his company Nchain announced they were not behind the BCH project as many assumed the firm might’ve been the “unknown” mining hashrate. “The incorrect comments include anything suggesting that I am behind the bitcoin cash initiative; I am not,” explains Wright.

However, I applaud the efforts of whoever is behind bitcoin cash to achieve a truly decentralized, peer-to-peer electronic cash with higher, more efficient transaction capacity.

Nchain’s CEO Stefan Matthews also confirmed Wright’s statements by telling the media the company has not backed the bitcoin cash project. “We agree with its principles to bring sound money to the world with low fees and reliable confirmations, and its desire to spur unrestricted growth, global adoption, and decentralized development. We wish success to bitcoin cash and whoever is responsible for the initiative,” Matthews adds. What do you think about the bitcoin cash progress so far? Let us know what you think in the comments below.

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Images via Shutterstock, Fork.lol, and Coin Dance charts. 

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