Bitcoin Cash (BCH) markets have been incredibly bullish over the past two days surpassing the steady base of $300 that BCH has maintained for a solid week, hitting a high of $700 yesterday, according to Coin Market Cap. So just what is going on with BCH?
As blocks continue to process, BCH edges its way closer to the legacy Bitcoin’s network mining profitability. It’s what could be known as the “flippening,” and block 479808 is the block to watch if it’s going to happen (this weekend), Coindesk reported.
As BCH mining profitability becomes more appealing to miners, the chance of other mining pools using hash power for BCH is greater, especially if the new kid on block Bitcoin Cash’s markets continue to rise.
Now, why would miners abandon the legacy Bitcoin? Because BCH chain’s difficulty has also dropped, and at the same time the price has risen over 75% in the last two days. As such, Bitcoin cash mining (BCH) is now currently 2% percent more profitable to mine than the legacy Bitcoin (BTC).
Another reason is the legacy Bitcoin blockchain charges higher fees on transactions, so miners must take into account the extra 1.5 BTC per block on Bitcoin (about $6,000 USD) while Bitcoin Cash offers very low fees under $50 USD.
All around BCH just seems like the more attractive opportunity for miners.
Currently, the BCH blockchain only has a few mining pools including – Viabtc, Bitclub, and the ‘unknown mining pool that have dedicated hashrate to processing the protocol’s blocks.
However, on August 17th the founder of Bitmain Technologies and the mining pool Antpool, Jihan Wu, said his pool might join BCH mining if others do.
“Antpool will start to provide Bitcoin Cash mining option after at least one of Segwit supporter/fan pools start to mining bitcoin cash,” explains Jihan Wu on Twitter.
Even one of Bitcoin’s biggest investors Roger Ver has praised Bitcoin Cash (BCH) telling everyone to “watch what happens next” with the cryptocurrency. Further stating that the “Economic code that lead to Bitcoin’s great success is alive and well in the form of Bitcoin Cash.”
The original economic code that led to Bitcoin’s great success is alive and well in the form of #BitcoinCash. Watch what happens next: pic.twitter.com/H9SeCvGR8C
— Roger Ver (@rogerkver) August 18, 2017
Although, as of this writing, depending on the block times Bitcoin gets the 100 confirmations needed for the mining reward faster than bitcoin cash. (Bitcoin takes about 17 hours and Bitcoin Cash takes about 34 hours.) So even though miners would be getting more profitability for their mining it would take longer on the BCH chain at least at the moment to confirm the rewards.
So this scenario is very real, as why wouldn’t miner pools want to dedicate more power to mining a coin they are making at least a 21% return on opposed to more difficult blocks for the legacy Bitcoin and less profit?
Want an edge in crypto markets? Subscribe to our free newsletter. Follow Coinivore on Facebook, at Twitter and Steemit.