The mining station for Bitcoin Cash has gotten quite interesting. Ever since it became more profitable to mine BCH, miners have started to switch. ViaBTC is also increasing their overall hashpower for the Cash chain, by the look of things. At this rate, the next difficulty adjustment will occur a lot quicker than anticipated. At that, we will see how the big miners and pools respond to the BCH situation. It will be quite interesting to see what the consequences will be, to say the least.
Most people are well are of how one can currently mine Bitcoin Cash at a lower difficulty setting. This is done intentionally to keep the blockchain moving forward. Additionally, mining BCH was rather unprofitable for quite some time. So much even that miners would lose 50% or more by switching over. With less hashpower, the BCH network adjusts the difficulty automatically. Not that the mining power is increasing, however, the next adjustment will see the difficulty go up by quite a margin. Right now, it seems that change will triple the current difficulty.
Bitcoin Cash Keeps Shaking Things up
This is both good news and bad news at the same time. Good news in the form of Bitcoin Cash successfully surviving and going through an upward difficulty adjustment. It’s also bad news as it will require a lot more hashpower to mine blocks moving forward. With ViaBTC now adding more mining power, that isn’t much of a problem. However, the question remains whether or not other big miners and pools will switch. Mining Bitcoin Cash is far more profitable right now and that percentage only keeps increasing, by the look of things.
To put this into perspective, the majority of Bitcoin miners still signal SegWit. Most of these pools prefer SegWit2x, rather than BIP141. Considering how the Core supporters don’t like SegWit2x too much, an issue can become prevalent in the coming days. With this discrepancy between both communities and BCH being more profitable, interesting decisions need to be made. It is possible we will see a lot of mining power come to the Bitcoin Cash chain. It is equally possible nothing will change whatsoever. A decrease in hashpower doesn’t bode well for Bitcoin, though, that much is evident. Fewer miners means higher fees, mempool issues, and who knows what else.
All of this goes to show there’s a lot more to Bitcoin Cash than meets the eye. After a full week of people claiming every should “dump this shitcoin”, things have come around to bite those people in the rear. Never listen to advice from a random stranger on the Internet. Experts knew BCH would have some life left in one way or another. It appears things are falling into place for BCH right now. Whether or not this situation will remain so positive, remains to be seen. Cryptocurrency has a habit of working in strange ways, especially when things are on the verge of shifting in a major way.
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