Everyone is familiar with the hash war that affected the cryptocurrency market at the beginning of December. In what was supposed to be a routine network update, the BCH community failed to reach a consensus on how to go about the network update and ended up splitting ways. BCH’s initial blockchain split into two; each naming themselves and amassing community support.

BCH split into two parts, namely;

1. Bitcoin ABC (Adjustable Blocksize Cap)
2. Bitcoin SV (Satoshi’s Vision)

They split up on the basis of conflicting ideologies and technical differences. Which essentially meant that both sides of the community couldn’t agree on which future for Bitcoin Cash they wanted more. Ironically, the original Bitcoin Cash itself was a result of a hardfork from the world’s first cryptocurrency; Bitcoin.

When the community could not reach a consensus, the blockchain split into two and there ensued a hash war for the BCH label and the community. The general non-verbal agreement was that the side that performed better would retain rights to the Bitcoin Cash label.

Both sides engaged in a neck and neck hash war, which in fact brought the cryptocurrency market down. The hash war became extremely personal over the course of it, with the big names spearheading both sides making it so. Further, the hash war left a very bad aftertaste in the crypto community.

During the BCH hash wars, the Bitcoin market slipped under a handful of its support lines and had adverse effects on the entire market. When Bitcoin falls, the other cryptocurrencies follow.

In the end, BCH SV conceded to BCH ABC. The community backing BCH SV said that their priorities had shifted and that they would like to start focussing on their cryptocurrency now. Both coins are still a part of the top 10. BCH SV just a little behind BCH ABC.

Let us take a closer look at the two coins and what changes they propose to make to the Bitcoin Cash network. First, let us take a look at BCH ABC.

Bitcoin Adjustable Blocksize Cap

The Bitcoin ABC team was headed by the likes of Roger Ver and Jihan Wu. Both very big names in the cryptocurrency market. Their take on the Bitcoin Cash split was that they should preserve the original functionality and blockchain of the Bitcoin Cash and not make any radical changes to the existing system.

However, for the purpose of increasing scalability, in the upcoming network update, they proposed two changes.

• To remove the immediate implementation which caused bottlenecks in the blockchain in order to increase the block size limit.

• The second change that they proposed for the network update was that they would allow only the node operator rights to increase the block size.

• lay the technical groundwork for large-scale on-chain scaling.
  
  
• Promote Interoperability

The other aspect that Bitcoin ABC wanted to focus on interoperability between Bitcoin Cash and the other cryptocurrencies in the market. This, according to team Bitcoin ABC, would help them build stronger community ties and attract themselves more investors.

Instead of making radical changes to the Bitcoin Cash structure, team Bitcoin ABC wanted to focus on improving the software alone. They were totally against the radical changes that the team Bitcoin SV was suggesting because they believed it would dilute the purpose of Bitcoin Cash as a whole.

BCH Token Economics

Since the end of the hash war, Bitcoin ABC is now called Bitcoin Cash itself. And has one half of the original BCH community. The token is now listed on many major exchanges and peer-to-peer platforms.

BCH ABC or as it is now known as BCH itself is a minable coin. Its mining algorithm is SHA256. Which means, most BTC mining rigs can mine BCH as well. With the one difference between the two being their authentication.

The top three exchanges from where you can buy your BCH tokens now are; Upbit, Huobi and Binance. As people who owned Bitcoin Cash before the hardfork will know, the same wallets are still supporting the coin with no exceptions. Trezor, Coinomi, Jaxx, etc still support and allow users to store their Bitcoin Cash tokens.

Token Performance

The token in its new form has just been re-released. The token, having won the hash war, has been doing quite well. Considering the community backing slowly halving, the coin is still managing to keep its value up.

In the last twenty-four hours alone, Bitcoin Cash jumped two places in coinmarketcap’s listing on the basis of market cap, from 8th to 6th. And has also seen a 24% rise in value, which took it from $82.49 USD to, at the time of writing, $112.04 USD.   

Now let’s look at Bitcoin SV.

Bitcoin Satoshi’s Vision

Team Bitcoin SV was led by names like Craig Wright, Jimmy Nguyen, Calvin Ayre and others. The whole objective of Team Bitcoin SV, as the name suggests, was to restore Satoshi Nakamoto’s original vision for Bitcoin and by extension, other cryptocurrencies.

The community at Team Bitcoin SV believed that over the years, the cryptocurrency market had lost sight of what it was originally supposed to be; a means for transacting. They believed that the cryptocurrencies in the market right now were more investment like rather than transactional in nature. Which, according to team Bitcoin SV, was Satoshi’s original vision for cryptocurrencies.

In order to achieve this, they proposed radical changes to the Bitcoin Cash’s blockchain. The changes that they were proposing are:

• Increase blocksize

• Increase smart contract capabilities

• Physically change blockchain’s structure

The reason for these changes is because they were striving to restore Satoshi’s vision of transactional cryptocurrencies. This can be achieved by increasing the TPS rate of the blockchain.

Blocksize across blockchains is 32MB and the case was the same with Bitcoin Cash. But with this new format, Bitcoin SV wanted to change it from 32MB to 128MB. By doing this, they could process more transactions at once, thereby increasing the blockchain’s TPS.

Another major change they were pushing for was to make it easier for the blockchain to facilitate the issuing of smart contracts for users that were interested. The one change that Bitcoin SV wanted to bring about that was at the core of the entire split was that they wanted to make a cryptocurrency more transactional in nature and deviate completely from the route that it was headed down where it was and is becoming more and more like an investment. And to bring about a change like that, Craig Wright and the rest of the team at Bitcoin SV, believed that radical changes were required.

Bitcoin SV Token Economics

Bitcoin SV having lost the hash war, had to start out as its very own cryptocurrency. It is, at the moment, one of the ‘newest’ cryptocurrencies in the market. But having come from a blockchain split, the token has an advantage over the others. It is ranked as the 9th largest cryptocurrency on coinmarketcap’s listings.

Being a new token, many exchanges were initially apprehensive about listing it. However, after the dust settled, most exchanges have listed BSV on their websites. With that being said, the top three exchanges from where to buy BSV right now are; Binance, Upbit and DigiFinex.

The token is minable. And the spearheads of the Bitcoin SV camp have created their own website called SVPool for people to help them mine their cryptocurrency. The website was started by Craig Wright himself. The SVPool website also provides wallet services for all users that hold BSV.

Token Performance

The BSV token started off with an advantage, despite having lost the hash war with BCH ABC. The BSV token in the first month of its existence has become a member of the top 10 cryptocurrency club. While price wise, the token has remained quite stable, it is currently trading at $83.99 USD.

In the last twenty-four hours, the coin has had a 6.57% hike in value.

Post Hash War

The hash war went on for a couple of weeks. In the end, there was a lot of mining power that was redirected from Bitcoin to the Bitcoin Cash hash war which further affected Bitcoin prices. The hash war, undoubtedly, left quite a bad aftertaste in the community. After a long drawn out fight, the hash war concluded when Bitcoin SV conceded to Bitcoin ABC.

After surrendering, Calvin Ayre had a press release with him saying the following on behalf of the Bitcoin SV community; “After Bitcoin Core became SegWit coin last year, our mission has always been to make sure the original Bitcoin survives and succeeds. With its series of radical and unilateral code changes in just the last week, ABC’s BCH has departed so far from the original Bitcoin that it is now an altcoin developer experiment and we no longer have any interest in it or its tarnished brand. Bitcoin SV fought to preserve the Satoshi Vision and is the original Bitcoin. We will now focus entirely on building upon an already vibrant Bitcoin SV ecosystem. Although ABC may keep the damaged BCH ticker symbol, BSV is winning over BCH’s native application ecosystem in droves. We look forward to out-competing BCH (and BTC) in the marketplace, rather than in further chain battles.”

These were the decisions made post-hash war:

• Bitcoin ABC will go through with its network update as planned
  
• Bitcoin ABC will hereby be called Bitcoin Cash
  
  
• Bitcoin SV and its community will split away and be its own cryptocurrency
  
  
• Bitcoin SV goes under the banner of BSV
  
  
• The community will be split between the two in a 1:1 ratio  

Having won the infamous hash war, Bitcoin ABC earned the right to use the Bitcoin Cash banner and is now known as just Bitcoin Cash. And is trading at $112.4 USD. Bitcoin SV is not far behind and currently trading at $83.99 USD, at the time of writing.

As exchanges and trading platforms wait for the cryptocurrency market to settle down, Bitcoin Cash has now become two parts. At the time of writing, Bitcoin ABC or Bitcoin Cash and Bitcoin SV are at 6th and 9th largest cryptocurrency in the market, respectively.

Hitesh Malviya

Hitesh Malviya is the Founder of ItsBlockchain. He is one of the most early adopters of blockchain & cryptocurrency enthusiast in India. After being into space for a few years, he started IBC in 2016 to help other early adopters learn about the technology.
Before IBC, Hitesh has founded 4 companies in the cyber security & IT space.