BCH is a hastily written hack job by a third rate team (I talked to some of them on twitter, they really don't understand a lot of what they are doing)... with a drastic difficulty retargeting algorithm. A bit of a pump combined with hash power manipulations lead to this.
This is all show to try and prop up the coin. Both the pump and the "profitability" of mining it.
%98 of the blocks of this coin are mined by an unknown entity-- in other words, it's not decentralized. It's trivial for that entity to manipulate the difficulty retargeting mechanism in his favor.
The next regular difficulty adjustment took weeks to reach after the mining power decreased. It was hours between blocks for a while. Now new blocks are mined every 10 minutes again, which makes mining cost-effective again and allows transactions to go through. With a lower difficulty and a $800+ price, Bitcoin Cash mining looks good right now.
The "market cap" for BCH has to be way overestimated. It assumes there's a BCH for every BTC. But there isn't. Not everybody got their converted asset out.
This is all completely hilarious. I mean think about what all of us are doing here. These coins only exist because we believe they exist and have value. I'm not naysaying -- it's legitimately funny. We're building rigs to "mine" internet coins like a slot machine that only costs electricity, and some of the world's smartest people have spent so much time thinking about it and building on it. And now we have Bitcoin Cash which is nipping at 25% the value of Bitcoin. That means anyone who bought at $300 just 3x'd their money. 3X! Do you know how hard it is for like almost anyone in the world to triple their money? I know BTC went up by like 130% in the last 60 days, but BCH is now theoretically a separate store of value. And you only 2x'd your money on that old crufty BTC. Cool kids got 3x on BCH.
The whole thing is just amazing and absurd and absurdly amazing.
Just trade it with that in mind. Bad news for commodities typically means a constriction in the supply with the same amount of demand. Price goes up, just like with oil or orange juice prices.
People thinking about bitcoin like a company's stock or the stock market contribute to why they can't comprehend the train wreck to all time high prices.
Hopefully there will be good ways to go bearish by the time Coinbase enables Bitcoin Cash.
It is a possibility, of course, but I don't think it's very likely. Segwit is (finally) about to activate on BTC which means we'll eventually get Lightning Network on mainnet.
Segwit is not going to activate on BCH because the BCH proponents are ideologically opposed to Segwit.
Additionally, almost no businesses are taking payment in BCH. BCH has to build its ecosystem up from scratch like any other altcoin. I think it has similar chances of "overtaking Bitcoin" as, for example, Litecoin.
EDIT: I don't know why the BCH price has gone up so much. It's almost certainly in even more of a bubble than BTC is currently in.
Not any time soon. At present it's an altcoin with the main sponsors (Roger Ver and ViaBTC) still trying to push it along in the hope of organic trading action starting.
Highly unlikely. BCH is the result of non-technical people who do not trust new technology in bitcoin an wanted a coin they could control.
%98 of BCH is mined by one entity.
They wanted their own bitcoin and they have it now and they are pumping it, but they don't have a decent development team and their motives are not good.
No chance among those who understand how and why bitcoin works. An unlimited bitvoin is worthless because it could be replaced to centralize ledger, and will be eventually. Bitcoin is in extraordinarily inefficient system that would serve no purpose if not for the decentralization that limits protect.
Note that Bitcoin Cash will have a difficulty reduction at block 479808 (in 62 blocks as of this writing) projected around 30% further increasing the profitability vs Bitcoin [1]. It is now 52% more profitable to mine Bitcoin Cash [2].
There's a twist to this profitability statistic, which I haven't seen mentioned anywhere yet: your reward for mining a block can be spent only after many other blocks are mined on top of your block.
That changes the game significantly. What matters for a miner is not "it's more profitable with the current difficulty and price", but instead "it's more profitable with the current difficulty and the price X blocks in the future". Moreover, once they've mined a block on one chain, it's in their interest to keep that chain alive and working well for at least X blocks, so they can convert enough of their reward into fiat to pay their costs. The obvious way to do it would be to keep mining on the same chain, which generates yet more block rewards to be claimed later. All that might make the chain choice somewhat sticky for the miner: once on one chain, it's better to keep on the same chain instead of switching every time the price swings.
The only real money being spend are the transactions on the exchanges. There, it becomes hard to differentiate many 'real' buys of bitcoin cash from someone just flipping back and forth between the two.
Other than Bitcoin Core most of the popular alt coins have come down in price during this rally so many traders are just exchanging one cryptocurrency for another.
It seems the split created value. The derivative is worth what the original was worth not that long ago. Great in the short term but possibly means the combined value is less trustworthy. Derivatives of magic money I guess.
So what's to stop continued splitting until the public figures it out and then we all crash?
I wonder if "forking" Bitcoin will become the default method for new coins to be created in the future. It seems like it has advantages, you can pretty much "prove" that you have not premined your coin (although implementation of the fork still would be very important).
Sadly, I exchanged my BCH for BTC before this occurred. I missed out on those 2x gains! (Of course, these are all coins I mined years ago, so it's free money anyway.)
I resisted buying BCH because I just don't think it has the same long term value as BTH like almost any altcoin. Hope I don't regret this decision in 6 months
[+] [-] rothbardrand|8 years ago|reply
This is all show to try and prop up the coin. Both the pump and the "profitability" of mining it.
%98 of the blocks of this coin are mined by an unknown entity-- in other words, it's not decentralized. It's trivial for that entity to manipulate the difficulty retargeting mechanism in his favor.
Stay away. This is not "bitcoin" in any sense.
[+] [-] davidgerard|8 years ago|reply
BTW, not even the one actual use case for bitcoin is interested in bcash: https://www.reddit.com/r/DarkNetMarkets/comments/6s30ss/have...
[+] [-] Animats|8 years ago|reply
The "market cap" for BCH has to be way overestimated. It assumes there's a BCH for every BTC. But there isn't. Not everybody got their converted asset out.
[+] [-] sillysaurus3|8 years ago|reply
The whole thing is just amazing and absurd and absurdly amazing.
[+] [-] ringaroundthetx|8 years ago|reply
People thinking about bitcoin like a company's stock or the stock market contribute to why they can't comprehend the train wreck to all time high prices.
Hopefully there will be good ways to go bearish by the time Coinbase enables Bitcoin Cash.
[+] [-] richardw|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] echelon|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jstanley|8 years ago|reply
Segwit is not going to activate on BCH because the BCH proponents are ideologically opposed to Segwit.
Additionally, almost no businesses are taking payment in BCH. BCH has to build its ecosystem up from scratch like any other altcoin. I think it has similar chances of "overtaking Bitcoin" as, for example, Litecoin.
EDIT: I don't know why the BCH price has gone up so much. It's almost certainly in even more of a bubble than BTC is currently in.
[+] [-] davidgerard|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] exit|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rothbardrand|8 years ago|reply
%98 of BCH is mined by one entity.
They wanted their own bitcoin and they have it now and they are pumping it, but they don't have a decent development team and their motives are not good.
[+] [-] kobeya|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lawn|8 years ago|reply
[1]: http://bitcointicker.co/bccnetworkstats/
[2]: https://cash.coin.dance/blocks
[+] [-] cesarb|8 years ago|reply
That changes the game significantly. What matters for a miner is not "it's more profitable with the current difficulty and price", but instead "it's more profitable with the current difficulty and the price X blocks in the future". Moreover, once they've mined a block on one chain, it's in their interest to keep that chain alive and working well for at least X blocks, so they can convert enough of their reward into fiat to pay their costs. The obvious way to do it would be to keep mining on the same chain, which generates yet more block rewards to be claimed later. All that might make the chain choice somewhat sticky for the miner: once on one chain, it's better to keep on the same chain instead of switching every time the price swings.
[+] [-] hans0l074|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rocqua|8 years ago|reply
The only real money being spend are the transactions on the exchanges. There, it becomes hard to differentiate many 'real' buys of bitcoin cash from someone just flipping back and forth between the two.
[+] [-] rastapasta|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] eswat|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] richardw|8 years ago|reply
So what's to stop continued splitting until the public figures it out and then we all crash?
[+] [-] matthewbauer|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] int_19h|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wyldfire|8 years ago|reply
If I think that Bitcoin Cash will ultimately not succeed, I should sell into this P&D, right?
[+] [-] jstanley|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] keypusher|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] icedchai|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rasmus1610|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] trophycase|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rothbardrand|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|8 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] bdcravens|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|8 years ago|reply
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