This Is How The Bitcoin Cash Hard Fork Happened

By Prashant Jha

Of late, the Bitcoin SV cryptocurrency has found itself in the midst of a great deal of controversy. Bitcoin Satoshi Vision, as it was named, has landed in trouble because the two men behind it have been so adamant in claiming that one of them, Craig Wright, is the real Satoshi Nakamoto who created Bitcoin, the pioneering cryptocurrency. If you have ever wondered how Bitcoin SV even came to be, it was created by a hard fork of Bitcoin Cash. If you are confused as to what that is, this is how the Bitcoin Cash hard fork happened.

You May Also Read: How Big Is The Bitcoin Cash Blockchain?

Now, the interesting part of this whole thing is that Bitcoin Cash itself was a hard fork of Bitcoin, having come into existence in August 2017. A part of the community, led by Roger Ver, had decided to break away from the original Bitcoin blockchain via a hard fork to tackle the ongoing scalability problem with a solution not acceptable to the traditional Bitcoin community.

Bitcoin Cash Hard Fork: What Really Happened?

Now, the fork of the Bitcoin Cash blockchain was initiated by a community of users and nodes led by Craig Wright, a man who had claimed to be Satoshi.

This group wanted to restructure the entire Bitcoin Cash ecosystem and revert to what they believed to be Satoshi’s original idea, increasing the block size from 32 MB to 128 MB in the process. This was the Bitcoin SV wing.

On the other hand, the conservatives, who called themselves Bitcoin Cash ABC, decided to oppose any such restructuring, and wanted to stick to the original blockchain network that the Bitcoin Cash ecosystem had been using this while.

A neutral group of community members also emerged, and calling themselves Bitcoin Ultimates, they sought to reach a compromise between ABC and SV.

This hard fork was scheduled for 15th November,2018 2018, and the hash wars continued well into the latter part of the month, while the peak lasted till 17th November, 2018.

While both Bitcoin Cash ABC and SV went into the hash war quite aggressively, it seemed that the conservatives managed to retain the upper hand throughout, even as Bitcoin SV broke away from the existing Bitcoin Cash blockchain.

Considering that a lot of the hashing power moved from Bitcoin to the Bitcoin Cash hash war, the market underwent a terrible slump during this period, and saw major coins experience sharp price drops. Soon, most top cryptocurrency exchanges assigned the original BCH ticker symbol to Bitcoin Cash ABC, the conservative faction.

How Does It Stand Now?

As of now, Bitcoin SV seems to have been entirely discredited in the crypto community as a result of the Twitter drama that played out between Craig Wright (with Calvin Ayre on his side) and Twitter user Hodlonaut over Wright’s claim to be the real Satoshi.

Disgusted by the distasteful spat, many exchanges, led by Binance, then ShapeShift and then Kraken have taken the decision to delist Bitcoin SV.

So, as of now, the position of Bitcoin SV and even its future within the crypto community seems to be rather precarious. In fact, Bitcoin Cash ABC (BCH) is still ahead in terms of the blocks mined in the hash war.

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Prashant Jha

As a content writer Prashant believes in presenting complex topics in simple laymen terms. He is a tech enthusiast and an avid reader.

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