[fosap]

It seems there is currently more hashpower behind BCH than BTC. [1] Because of the current price surge mining bch became way more profitable, but this will change with the next adjustment.

If more hashpower sticks with BCH, I would consider it to be the winner.

[1] https://fork.lol/pow/hashrate

[nosuchthing]

Mining pool operators are in a position to manipulate the markets.

Given the extremely low liquidity of all the exchanges (large holders often move their funds off-line), the markets rates are trivially manipulated. This in turn manipulates miner incentives.

Social media is a shit show of shills and propaganda from all angles. So really only time will tell.

[shanusmagnus]

The truth of this statement cannot be emphasized enough. I think one of the real weaknesses of the crypto world is the complete absence of a community where people whose mouths are not connected directly to their brainstems can talk and discuss issues related to crypto -- and I mean not just about investment (I'm not very interested in that) but about relevant technological and social issues. There is literally no place to have a sane discussion on any of this that I've found -- would _love_ to be corrected if someone knows better.

[saalweachter]

I think the larger problem is that most anyone talking about cryptocurrencies has a financial interest in them, and indeed, people without a financial interest are considered biased against them and not worth listening to.

[ktta]

>Social media is a shit show of shills and propaganda from all angles. So really only time will tell.

The r/bitcoin and r/btc sub-reddits really went to trash recently. Everyone's been bickering about their own opinions. Worst of all, constant front page vitriol about each other.

[1_player]

I read /r/BitcoinMarkets. It's more centred around day trading, they are very optimistic about the future (i.e. bullish, "to the moon!"), so take their opinions with salt, but it's a good, up-to-date source of information.

[topmonk]

> Mining pool operators are in a position to manipulate the markets.

I don't know what this fixation is on hashrate. As long as it doesn't drop to low enough a level for someone who wants to attack it to be successful, it doesn't make any difference to the coin's functionality.

Anyone with the ability to buy or sell a large amount of crypt can manipulate the markets. This holds doubly true in the middle of the night on a weekend.

[shanusmagnus]

It makes a giant difference in the amount of time it takes to mine blocks, especially during hashrate fluctuations, where a currency without a responsive difficulty adjustment algorithm (e.g., Bitcoin) can be 'stranded' with a too-hard difficulty, which means transactions don't get processed, which means there's a giant lag in money movement and fee escalation, etc. etc.

The interplay between hashrate, difficulty, txs, fees, price, and sentiment is pretty complicated and definitely important. See http://www.fork.lol to see this illustrated.

[_jal]

> Social media is a shit show of shills and propaganda from all angles. So really only time will tell.

I'm curious about historic precedents - I really don't know much about the history of currency. There must have been analogues in the past - I know Isaac Newton famously went to war with counterfeiters, but that (and vague memories of hearing about bank currency in the US) about the only instance of currency competition I know of.

Anyone want to recommend a quality book on the topic?

[hackinthebochs]

Which is a good argument for off-chain scaling (i.e. Segwit). As it is miners have way too much power and their incentives are not aligned with the holders of the currency. Off chain scaling massively reduces their ability to hold the network hostage: value can still be transferred even if transactions slow to a crawl.

[wscott]

That https://fork.lol site is fascinating. Thanks for linking to it.

Right now BCH has a way higher hash rate than the difficulty, but that is going to adjust in 8hr or sooner if the trend continues. At that point, BTC will again be more profitable and you would expect everyone to switch back. Meanwhile, the fees on BTC are going way up because that chain gets used more frequently. That will also pressure miner back to the BTC chain.

[cesarb]

> and you would expect everyone to switch back

That happened when BCH was new. What happened then was that everyone switched to BTC, the BCH chain stopped completely for a few hours, and then BCH's extra difficulty adjustment rule kicked in and lowered the difficulty a lot, so everyone switched to BCH again. That oscillation was leading to periods of nearly zero blocks and periods of nearly a block per minute for the BCH chain. To prevent that, some BCH supporters left enough miners in the BCH chain that the extra difficulty adjustment rule didn't kick in, even when it was less profitable.

From what I've read, this time there's a difference: in a few days, BCH (or at least some of it) will have a hardfork which changes the extra difficulty adjustment rule. I haven't seen a good explanation of the new rule so far (only complaints that it was unilaterally decided by some developers), but depending on how it works this might be the last time miners can get thousands of blocks in a few days, which would explain why this time there's so much hash power in the BCH chain. And depending on how it works, there might be no longer a need for BCH supporters to keep enough miners in the BCH chain to prevent the extra difficulty adjustment rule from kicking in, so it's even possible that every miner switches to BTC at once.

On the other hand, if the new extra difficulty adjustment rule works, jumping from one chain to the other might become less profitable, so some miners might decide to stay on the BCH chain permanently. These miners might be now selling their BTC for BCH, which would neatly explain the rise in the BCH price and the drop in the BTC price.

[AJ007]

I wonder what the actual liquidity is of converting BCH in to hard currency? (which ultimately miners need to pay for operations and capital expenditures.)

It was blatantly obvious (to me) that something funny going on at MtGox meant the price was not real. The number of global exchanges, alt coins, and overall crytpocurrency appreciation in 2017 makes it almost impossible to sniff out potential problems. Despite the radical transparency of the blockchain ledger, all of the other trading and exchange activity is quite opaque.

[wscott]

And indeed the difficulty adjusted and the bulk of the miners returned to BTC. They have too much money invested to have an ideology. For the most part, miners will follow the money. Price discovery, you will have mining on each chain in proportion to its profits. Some might switch for other motivations, but a money motivated miner will balance him out.

I find the supposed "voting power" of the miners to be a mirage. When it comes down to it they just follow the money.

[tfha]

That's actually a bad situation for bch. Because of the EDA, their block reward ends up being equal in USD to the bitcoin block reward, regardless of their own price.

Basically, every 12 hours the difficulty resets and then they get 2 weeks worth of mining + inflation in just a few days (at lower prices, just a few hours).

That's not a good thing for you if you hold bch.

[taysic]

The upgrade today to BCH is addressing this.

[tfha]

Their new algorithm is also broken.

[topmonk]

Why? The hashpower is based on profitability which is based on price. You might as well be saying if the price is high enough it will be the winner.

[jstanley]

Long-term, whichever is the winner will gain the most price and therefore the most hashpower.

Neither hashpower nor price make it the winner. In the long term, actual people wanting to hold & use it makes a winner. Price and hashpower follow that.

[fosap]

Inside of one coin hashpower makes the winner, because the chain with the most accumulated difficulty wins. It makes sense to transfer this to the relation of different coins. currently BTC wins, but if miners would stick to bch this might change.

[topmonk]

> Neither hashpower nor price make it the winner.

Either you or I are having trouble parsing the English language tonight. I never implied otherwise.

[ojr]

I consider it a winner a long time ago, sold my bitcoins for it when the ratio was 0.15, accumalated some more at 0.055 and now its 0.25, I predict 1 BTC = 0.5 BCH before the end of the year

[jondubois]

I was discussing the possible price crossover between Bitcoin and Bitcoin Cash with a colleague just a few days ago after I found out about the 'New York Agreement' which had been signed by several major exchanges.

If you read about the New York Agreement and you understand the technical implications of it then you should have a very clear idea about what is going to happen when the exchanges start honoring that agreement.

[mcintyre1994]

Can you explain the agreement in English-for-people-who-don't-follow-Bitcoin? I found this: https://medium.com/@DCGco/bitcoin-scaling-agreement-at-conse...

Which says:

> We agree to immediately support the following parallel upgrades to the bitcoin protocol, which will be deployed simultaneously and based on the original Segwit2Mb proposal:

- Activate Segregated Witness at an 80% threshold, signaling at bit 4

- Activate a 2 MB hard fork within six months

Where does Bitcoin Cash fit in here, and what's going to happen when the exchanges start honouring it? Was BCH the hard fork they talked about? What hasn't been honoured yet?

[ryebit]

The hard fork the NY agreement mentions was a protocol upgrade that was scheduled for 11/16/2017. The Segwit upgrade took hold, but the second "2mb hard fork" part proved very contentious, and was later cancelled/suspended citing lack of community support. (That fork was frequently called B2X or S2X).

There is some argument about who all actually signed on to the NY agreement - whether they represented the community at large, or just a smaller non-binding group. The contentiousness was overtly regarding the "2mb" increase's long-term consequences, but IMO it may have also been because adopting it would have essentially kicked out the existing software development group, replacing with a smaller less experienced group.

If the hard fork had happened, the NY agreement asserted it would have simply upgraded the BTC protocol; rather than create a new coin. Agreeing exchanges would have had to go along with the protocol upgrade. But concensus never formed, particularly among exchanges & businesses that didn't sign the NYA.

---

Bitcoin Cash / BCH was a separate coin that forked off of BTC around the same time as the NYA, but wasn't part of the NYA. It increased the block size (the "2mb" bit), but explicitly rejects segregated witness and some related changes. It's kinda odd it happened, because those involved in BCH were leaders in the NY agreement itself; so BCH be seen as an early repudiation of the NY agreement by it's own champions.

[wmf]

The New York Agreement was canceled the other day.

Also, comments like "if you understand the technical implications of it then you should have a very clear idea about what is going to happen" are really unhelpful, like a no-op soaked in condescension.