BTC.Top Briefly Dominates Mining on Bitcoin Cash (BCH) Network
The Chinese mining pool at one point produced more than 50% of blocks, suggesting the potential for a 50% attack on the network.
The Bitcoin Cash (BCH) network saw an example of the extraordinary influence of one of the pools, BTC.Top, which took up more than 50% of the hashrate. Coin Dance data has since shown the anomaly was a one-off event. Nevertheless, past statistics show that BTC.Top has always held a significant portion of the hashrate.
The extraordinary influence of the pool, getting very close to a 51% attack, follows a general slide in mining, especially after the hard fork in November 2018, which split the community and saw some of the pools move to Bitcoin SV (BSV). Combined with the general drop in SHA-256 mining, the Bitcoin Cash network may be seeing lowered security due to the high influence of separate actors.
Chinese mining pools are key for BCH, with continued allegations that Bitmain is extremely influential and directs the hashrate. The network is seeing relatively low activity, with 1.6 EH/ as opposed to Bitcoin’s rates of above 40 EH/s. This means that even a small amount of hashing power could be directed to attack the network.
For now, there seem to be no actors capable of doing this although BTC.Top comes close. However, there may be no willingness to attack a network, which would undermine the gains of the attacker as well.
The chances ViaBTC, Antpool, https://t.co/I5ukmvBzzr and https://t.co/8oEGxZ16o7 let anyone 51% Bitcoin Cash is astonishingly low.
— Rivers And High, Just-As-High, and Third (@UpsUpsAndDowns) December 26, 2017
They put millions and millions of dollars in hashpower into BCH when it was $900-300 at great loss compared to BTC.
The influence of one pool also shows that the network is somewhat centralized. Miners still volunteer although there has been talk of having trusted miners with some governance functions on the Bitcoin SV network. The Bitcoin Cash network has lost the influence of the Coingeek pool, which went on to support Bitcoin SV.
After trading anomalies subsided, BCH market prices have returned to levels of around $160. On Thursday, the asset traded at around $165.90, with only marginal growth in the past 24 hours. BCH is yet to reclaim the $400 level seen before the hard fork and subsequent ticker swap, which hurt volumes and prices.
Neither the author nor the publication assumes any responsibility or liability for any investments, profits, or losses made as a result of this information. Cryptocurrency trading and investing are risky propositions, and market participants are advised to always conduct thorough research.
