Coingeek, the voice of Calvin Ayre and the most prominent supporter of Craig Wright and his Bitcoin SV chain, has apparently thrown in the towel. They announced that they are no longer trying to unify the chains under the Bitcoin SV rules or to fight for the BCH ticker. Instead, they are pushing the BSV ticker, claiming that their vision is the true form of Bitcoin. They also added their own repeat protection, which eliminates the possibility of standardizing the chains.
They seem to have lost on all fronts and this is the next point we are likely to reach in a concession speech. In a press release titled, “Original Bitcoin Is Reborn With Bitcoin SV (BSV); BCH Hash War Ends ”, Ayre was quoted as saying
“After Bitcoin Core became the SegWit coin last year, our mission has always been to ensure that the original Bitcoin survived and succeeded. With its series of radical and one-sided code changes over the past week, ABC’s BCH has moved so far from the original Bitcoin that it is now an experiment for altcoin developers and we have no more interest in it or its tarnished brand. Bitcoin SV fought to preserve the Satoshi vision and is the original of Bitcoin. We will now fully focus on building on an already vibrant Bitcoin SV ecosystem. Although ABC may retain the corrupted BCH ticker symbol, BSV is gaining in droves the BCH native application ecosystem. We look forward to outperforming BCH (and BTC) in the market and not in more chain battles. “
While Ayre is showing a brave face (and would do it all over again in his own comment, also posted on CoinGeek), this is a huge departure from what he promised before the fork happened. In a September 10 post titled “CoinGeek Commits to Never Allow Bitmain’s Bitcoin Hash War to Split the BCH Chain,” which was also credited to Ayre, he set a set of goals that differed from those differ in the market.
“We will also fight any attempts by others to break the chain. CoinGeek and friends believe in the Satoshi vision for the development of Bitcoin and that means that all disputes should be settled through Nakamoto consensus and miner hash voting. The Nakamoto consensus dictates that the longest chain (with the highest proof of work) must prevail at all times, and this is respected at all times by CoinGeek Media and Mining. “
Despite this proclamation, CoinGeek’s mining pool did not switch to the longest chain with the best proof of work when that chain ended up being the BCH (ABC) chain. They claim that extra work comes from rented hash rather than honest hash. This may or may not be true, but there is nothing in the Satoshi whitepaper about where the hashing power comes from.
You can complain about tactics they want, but the fact is, Roger Ver and Jihan Wu kicked each other’s asses so convincingly that it’s hard to imagine anyone caring about Ayre’s influence on the situation.
Wu and Ver had more than enough hashing power in reserve to destroy Wright’s attempt to dictate the evolution of Bitcoin Cash. They also turned Wright’s long-hyped “Satoshi’s Shotgun” back on itself and ultimately slowed the SV chain down without affecting the ABC chain at all.
Personally, I don’t have a dog in the Bitcoin Cash race, I’m not a fan of the ABC or SV variant. But seeing a blowhard like “Faketoshi” Wright and his financier Ayre fall on their face after a loud and final proclamation was very funny for me and much of the Bitcoin community. Surely the man who invented Bitcoin would have seen Ver’s tactic coming?
But the man who claims to be Satoshi and couldn’t prove it definitely didn’t see this coming. In short, they tried sneaky tactics, threats and pumped their chests. And when all of that failed, they still thought they would win by pure hash power, but they failed again. Now they are trying to change the goal posts to announce that they actually won all along. But not even the internet has so little memory. Even five days after the Hash War began, Wright promised never to end the fight.
During the hash war, Bitcoin SV had a few minutes to stay ahead of the ABC chain and when that happened Wright stated that it was an indication that he was winning.
But then they lost that lead and never got it back. Remember, before the war began, Wright claimed that there would be no division at all.
Oops. Not only was there a breakup, Craig got the much smaller half as well.
After virtually every note exchange had ABC given the BCH tracker and the only services available to SV that were predetermined was the writing on the wall. Wright and Ayre made it as far as possible, but even narcissists have to admit defeat at some point. Or, in that case, claim you never tried to win anyway.
The war was not without victims. On November 14, prior to the split, Bitcoin Cash had a total market cap of $ 7,558,954,693. Today Bitcoin Cash (ABC) has a market cap of $ 3,054,315,128 while Bitcoin SV has a market cap of $ 1,923,453,582. Together this adds up to a total market capitalization of $ 4,977,768,710. This means that between the value lost by the fork and the general downtrend in crypto, Bitcoin Cash and Bitcoin SV lost a total of $ 2,581,185,983 in value, which is about 34% of their total value before the fork. That’s a lot of bag holders that lose a lot of Christmas bonuses. [Numbers were grabbed on 11/26/18]
The only silver lining for SV holders is that there was a significant profit yesterday. That makes sense because Wright and Ayre finally broke off their doomed war. The immediate issue of an ongoing, expensive hash war with a more popular opponent ended. There was nothing left but to go up, especially given the increased stability that comes with services and exchanges agreeing on a unified ticker and announcing their plans for BSV.
In other words, at the time of going to press, Bitcoin Cash and Bitcoin SV are priced at $ 175.31 and $ 97.20, respectively. Together this adds up to a price of $ 272.51. Before the fork, the price of Bitcoin Cash was $ 432.97. That said, even if you successfully split your ABC and SV coins, you still lost $ 160.46, or roughly 37% [Numbers were grabbed on 11/27/18].
I said a while ago that this breakup could kill Bitcoin Cash. I didn’t mean (and stated in the article) that it would go away completely. After all, Paycoin is still traded in some markets. But I felt that not only could it have killed every chance Bitcoin Cash had of taking over Bitcoin, it could have knocked it out of its place as the most popular non-Ethereum alternative to Bitcoin.
I’m not sure if that will happen or not. ABC has beaten BSV so dominantly in the hash wars that while it managed to lose more than $ 2.5 billion in value (and more if you factor in the value that went to BSV), it succeeded them to keep BCH in market capitalization via LTC for the time being.
But they no longer claim to be the real Bitcoin. I mean, they are, even BSV supporters, but nobody takes them seriously anymore. CNBC, who happily called Roger Ver for comments on the BTC / BCH split, didn’t call this “Bitcoin Hash Wars”. They hardly talked about it.
Because no outside observer believes that a $ 3 billion market cap coin or $ 2 billion market cap coin is superior to a $ 65 billion market cap coin. At least one coin with a $ 7 billion market cap and momentum stood a chance. That chance is gone now. The proof is in the pudding, as they say. Individuals may think Bitcoin Cash or Bitcoin SV are more adherent to the whitepaper than Bitcoin. This is not an opinion that I have, but it is an opinion that someone can have. But that doesn’t make it bitcoin. Satoshi never released a “1.0” version of Bitcoin because he and everyone else knew it wasn’t going to be completed. There was still work to be done.
You can’t agree with what the core developers did with Bitcoin if you want to, but you can’t argue whether they did it with Bitcoin. This debate is over. Craig Wright killed it. Maybe we should thank him.
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