As the blocktrain keeps chugging forward the stories, growth, conversions and diversions continue to amplify. While following Bitcoin and the immediately family, I keep thinking: What the Fork? Bitcoin Cash (BCH) is at it again.
Grand Vision From The Start
From the beginning Bitcoin Cash (BCH) has had a huge vision of where its place in the world should be. Understanding that a truly scalable cryptocurrency was needed, the community broke away from the pack to set out and build that vision.
Having started in August of 2017, BCH hard forked from BTC. From there it has been a roller coaster ride ever since.
I see the mainstream community pretty much give BCH a thumbs down at every turn, yet it still remains appearing a close competitor overall in terms of the the large vision of what BTC originally started as.
At an ATH of nearly $4,000 USD during the crypto boom of 2018 and today's prices hovering around the $230 USD mark, it seems there is something taking place.
What the Fork?
A date that most may want to keep in mind or even earlier if you are making a move is November 15, 2020. It appears there is an expected hard fork on the horizon.
At the moment the camp around Roger Ver and BCHN seems to have a small majority of the community, whereby Bitcoin ABC could be forked off. - Jake Simmons
According to an article in the last month from coinspeaker the fork is the result of issues culminated in the sharing and more importantly supporting the developers.
According to the ABC announcement, 90% of the developer’s time goes to supporting BCH with the most secure code possible. Since the team cannot work for free forever, they have decided to change the core consensus rules.
Asking the miners to share 8% of revenue with the coding team seems to be core to the issue in a released "Coinbase Rule" set to take effect on November 15, 2020.
From the current data on Coindance it's not entirely clear where the consensus is with both BCH ABC and BCHU utilizing a similar percentage.
At any rate, the data shows a clear divide in usage. The next level down is BCHN at 10% which is interesting, here's why:
Recently, from this crypto news flash article, it appears that some of the developers on BCHN have spoken out against the COINBASE Rule. If that sentiment holds true then it may add a clear majority to one side of the organge and green graph above.
That has all sorts of implications in terms of who keeps branding, images, names, etc.
November is just a few weeks away and is important for a whole grouping of reasons.
From Change Comes Opportunity
Not all forks are bad. I suppose you could view them that way. Although that would just be you manifesting and materializing a bad situation or outcome.
Conversely, there is opportunity with every change. Whether we realize it or not is the matter at hand. So, during a hard fork what are somethings that we could expect?
New Currency
Sometimes referred to as Free Money, when there is a hard fork, often times there is a set percentage duplication that occurs. You would expect a 1:1 gift so to speak. Yet, it could be different depending on the circumstances.
With a new currency comes a whole slough of other outcomes as well.
One noteworthy point listed in the article above is the need to have a personal BCH ABC address as opposed to value sitting on an exchange. So if you're actively in positions etc, it is something to think about where you are in November.
Increased Volatility
It could be safe to assume that with a hard fork you would see multidirectional movement from both the original and forked coin in short time frames. As an investor keeping a keen eye on the charts would be critical.
For the longer term hodl'r that may be less of an issue.
New Identity
At any event it would be expected that there would be new names, logos, and a parting in the communities. If that is truly the case here with BCH, I would hope it is to a far lesser degree than what we see in our political environments today.
You could say Trump - Clinton - Sanders all over again.
While there may be differences of opinions, focal points, I would hope and remain optimistic that the over-arching values would remain strong.
Bitcoin Cash may be the first network in history where two different coins share the same philosophy, yet divide, or even disappear, over time. -Jeff Fawkes
Whatever philosophy they share, one thing is for sure. A scalable, immutable, & noncorruptable digital asset is needed.
