> <i>More profoundly, Bitcoin Cash’s hashrate, or network-wide cryptographic processing power, has surpassed Bitcoin’s.</i><p>This is not correct. BCH difficulty adjustment algorithm kicked in last night (difficulty +400%) [1] and BCH mining profitability tanked.<p>BTC is now ~3.5x more profitable to mine [2], and as a result most of the hashpower has returned to BTC [3].<p>It would seem that at least a large part of the movements this weekend were the result of miners gaming the BCH difficulty adjustment algorithm, combined with a dash of FOMO and pump / dump dynamics.<p>BCH hardforks today to make an emergency fix to the difficulty adjustment algorithm [4], so longer term it will be interesting to see what happens to the price, once the incentives for miners to game the difficulty algorithm disappear.<p>Hopefully the new algorithm allows the BCH difficulty to stabilise and the two chains can coexist.<p>It increasingly seems that forks will be commonplace, and as such the bitcoin protocol could probably benefit from built in replay protection and a more responsive difficulty adjustment algorithm.<p>[1]: <a href="https://fork.lol/pow/difficulty" rel="nofollow">https://fork.lol/pow/difficulty</a><p>[2]: <a href="https://fork.lol/" rel="nofollow">https://fork.lol/</a><p>[3]: <a href="https://fork.lol/pow/hashrate" rel="nofollow">https://fork.lol/pow/hashrate</a><p>[4]: <a href="https://www.bitcoinabc.org/november" rel="nofollow">https://www.bitcoinabc.org/november</a>
Given that the bitcoin community normally seems so enamoured with trustless systems, I did think it was extremely odd that people went along with Segwit2x when it was implemented in such a way that the Segwit camp got a trustless guarantee while the 2x camp got no such guarantee.<p>After all, if Segwit have already got their payoff, what incentive do they have to support 2x?