Why Bitcoin Cash Was Never Going to Lose the Hash War With SV

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The cryptocurrency community expected a tight hash power battle between Bitcoin Cash (BCH) and Bitcoin Cash (SV) on November 15. But, with a decisive win and an anti-climactic result, BCH came out the winner.

Bitcoin.com, a company owned by Roger Ver, saw its hash rate spike to 4 exahash, easily surpassing the entire computing power on the Bitcoin Cash network prior to the hard fork.

With ViaBTC and Bitcoin.com’s hash power, Bitcoin ABC has been able to mine a significant amount of blocks after the fork, mining 32 more blocks than Bitcoin Cash SV (BSV).

BCH Was Never Losing to SV

Bitcoin SV, the camp of Craig Steven Wright, CoinGeek, and billionaire Calvin Ayre, was said to hold more than 57 percent of the hash power on the Bitcoin Cash network prior to the fork, and the possibility of a 51 percent attack as suggested by Craig Wright led investors to lose confidence in the short-term trend of BCH.

However, on Thursday, as the hash rate conflict between ABC and SV kicked off, it was evident within less than 30 minutes that the majority of hash power was on the side of ABC.

The Chinese mining community and Bitmain, the $15 billion cryptocurrency mining equipment manufacturer and mining pool operator, were not needed; solely with the computing power of ViaBTC and Bitcoin.com, ABC was able to defend its protocol against SV and the threats released by Craig Wright.

On November 15, Jiang Zhuoer, the CEO of BTC.TOP and a miner based in China, disclosed that Bitmain has more than 20,000 P hashrate, or 20 exahash. That is, twice of the hash rate of Coingeek, Craig Wright, and Calvin Ayre.

“Mining pools under Bitmain (such as BTC.com and Antpool) collectively have 15,000 P hashrate. With ViaBTC where Bitmain is a shareholder, the entity has 20,000 P hashrate altogether.”

More to that, rumors have suggested, as Zhouer explained, that more than 90,000 mining devices owned by Bitmain in Xinjiang could be used to defend ABC.

“Rumour has it that, Bitmain has 90,000 mining machines in Xinjiang to prepare for the hash war — but they are all meaningless rumours. If Bitmain is using the hashrate of BTC to start a hash war and this would be the epitome of ‘survival of the fittest.’”

Purely based on the discrepancy of computing power between Bitmain and the SV camp, Craig Wright, Coingeek, and Calvin Ayre had no chance of standing against ABC if Bitmain was to redirect its hash power to ABC, which was ultimately not needed.

Criticism Against SV

Emin Gun Sirer, a professor at the prestigious Cornell University, explained that the outcome of the battle between ABC and SV portrayed the necessity of a community, vision, technology, and other components to successfully launch and operate a blockchain network.

But, Sirer emphasized that SV had none of the factors that lead to the creation of a solid blockchain protocol.

“This point is at the heart of the main lesson from the BCH hashwar. One cannot assemble a good team just with money. To attract top notch talent, you need a strong, scientifically valid vision and novel, exciting tech, among other things. BSV has none of these.”

Featured Image from Shutterstock

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