BTC plus BCC showing strong combined gains as market attention shifts to next controversy

The combined price of bitcoin (BTC) and bitcoin cash (BCH) has risen about 75% since the formerly single Bitcoin split into two chains on August 1.  Events thus far appear to support my suggestion that the split could well be a net positive for holders of bitcoin prior to it.

In my August 5 article, “Descendants with modifications: Bitcoin’s new and possibly beneficial evolutionary test,” I argued that a marginal shift away from talk and toward innovative action could in itself prove a net positive. To at least some degree, an actual split would enable claims that one approach or another was superior to be replaced with practical reality checks across the board.

However, I also emphasized that the split was still a poor “test” from a scientific standpoint. Not only do the chains differ in headline qualities—one is activating SegWit and the other has revised its block size limit to 8MB (already two major variables in themselves)—but also in a whole list of other confounders. For example, the two chains differ in associated development teams and testing and review practices, which leads to contrasting levels of market confidence in the different code bases as a whole. This reflects far more than just the headline contrasts. In addition, the two started out with widely differing hashing power levels and coin prices. Nevertheless the split should provide some way to proceed with implementing respective visions of how innovation should progress, and to that extent could well beat a continuation of “unmitigated talk.”

Since that article appeared, the BTC price first rallied dramatically while the BCH price languished. One megabyte block size limit enthusiasts on social media sought to out-compete each other in boasting about how decisively they would “dump their bcash" (using a popular term of insult for bitcoin cash) as soon as they could. When trading in bitcoin cash finally came up to speed on exchanges, such commenters promised, BCH would crash as dumping of the latest new "altcoin/shitcoin" began in earnest. Since then, one by one, various cryptocurrency exchanges and wallets have announced support for BCH, with more to come.

In the event, the BTC chain still has its own dramas to live through. A stark reminder of this came with a blog post by BitPay instructing users in how to move to software that implements phase 2 of the “SegWit2x” or “New York” agreement, which calls for a revision of the BTC chain’s block size limit to 2MB in November, following phase 1, its recent activation of SegWit.

Full-fledged American-style “outrage politics" ensued against BitPay, as opponents of the block-size limit revision portion of the SegWit2x framework accused BitPay of fraud for not clarifying that moving to the BTC1 software it was recommending to its customers would split them off from the portion of the BTC network running Bitcoin Core software. Bitcoin Core software has merged code that disconnects Bitcoin Core nodes from BTC1 nodes. Few to no active Bitcoin Core contributors support the BTC1 project while a significant number of miners and bitcoin companies expressed support for the SegWit2x agreement.

It is unclear how this will be resolved. Intransigence and belligerence reign on social media between the vocal on the two "sides." Another chain split is possible, once again over exactly the same issue, the specific height of the block size limit. This next split, however, might be less clean than the last, which did have critical user protections in place, notably replay protection. A scenario in which BTC1 and Bitcoin Core navigate into an unclean chain split has the potential to leave Bitcoin Cash looking like the more stable option for the time being. With a limit revision already behind it for now, it could end up sitting on the hill overlooking the next BTC chain battle with a detached attitude of: "Bitcoin Cash user unaffected."

After the BitPay post brought this next controversy facing the BTC chain back onto the front burner of the market's attention, the BCH price promptly more than tripled from $300 to briefly peak at over $1,000, while the BTC price began to soften slightly.

The BTC + BCH total price, however, has continued to rise steadily for the time being (see chart). As of this writing, the combination remains more than $2,000 higher than before the chain split.

Looking ahead, much will depend on the interplay between hashing power, mining difficulty, and price. The dynamics of differences between the mining difficulty adjustments on the two chains could have some dramatic effects as mining power shifts in pursuit of profitability, resulting in follow-on differences in block discovery times.

As I concluded my discussion on August 5, so I will conclude this one: “The complex sequence of outcomes to ensue must now be seen in practice and over time.”

[Update: The original version used BCC for Bitcoin Cash throughout, but this code was already in use by another cryptocurrency. Since that time the Bitcoin Cash community has clearly shifted to BCH, so in this text I have changed to BCH where simple to do so (not in the title and graphics).]