Blockchair is a blockchain explorer that can use to better understand and compare transactions and activity on the Bitcoin and Bitcoin Cash blockchains.
A look at Blockchair's homepage
Bitcoin vs Bitcoin Cash
The past 24 hours have seen an incredible surge in Bitcoin Cash, and a pullback in the Bitcoin price. There is a ton of noise on both sides about what this means. Personally, I have a little bit of both and am not into the politics of it all. I am much more interested in Ethereum and Steemit.
Cutting through this noise is incredibly important, because we have the tools available to do exactly that: the blockchain.
Moving Beyond Propaganda
The Blockchair blockchain explorer is easy to use for a non technical user. You can toggle from one blockchain to another with the bottom slider (see above picture). You can get a quick look at the last ten mined blocks, which is a great way to compare activity, reliability, cost/kB of each chain.
A snapshot of BTC's last ten blocks
A snapshot of BCC's last ten blocks
Interestingly, Bitcoin Cash is currently kicking out blocks every couple of minutes, as opposed to the 10 minute block time that Bitcoin is supposed to have. My assumption (without looking-but YOU can!) is that there are more miners jumping into Bitcoin Cash and the difficulty hasn't adjusted yet. Bitcoin's block times are slower than 10 minutes on average...this confirms my assumption that a sizable portion of miners are moving chains.
ASICS and Options
Until Bitcoin Cash, there hasn't really been another option for ASICS miners besides Bitcoin. This has given Bitcoin a nice edge against other coins that have to fight for miners who can use GPUs and CPUs. But with Segwit 2x being cancelled (and uncancelled? I lose track...), Bitcoin Cash provides the only "large block" Bitcoin solution. Miners who believe in large block Bitcoin, or who see profit opportunity, can change chains over to Bitcoin Cash (and back to Bitcoin) as necessary.
I think we're going to see a lot of instability in the two chains for the time being, as miners move back and forth depending on profitability. You can watch and see if I'm right by checking out Blockchair daily (or more) and using it to see what activity on each chain is like.
Where do you think Bitcoin and Bitcoin Cash will go by end of 2017? Put your price predictions in the comments.
-Jeff
