While the BCH civil war rages on it looks like the only victorious crypto in this hashwar is actually going to be Bitcoin (BTC). Even though the entire crypto-market is taking a hit it seems to me like both Bitcoin Cash ABC as well as Bitcoin Cash SV are the true losers of this hashwar. And yes, this is Good for Bitcoin.
Dropping out of the top 5
Most of the market is down, surely, but Bitcoin Cash's two forks are suffering immensely by comparison. What started out as a cryptocurrency worth between $400 each has now split into two cryptocurrencies worth $250 and $150 a piece. Combined the value might be similar as before, though individually neither of them come close to capturing the glory of the prior Bitcoin Cash. Instead of being the #4 cryptocurrency in the world, both forked coins are now demoted out of the top 5. It remains to be seen what spot they manage to take on coinmarketcap and whether both can hold their current evaluations but by my estimates Bitcoin Cash ABC should be approximately at the #7 spot and Bitcoin Cash SV should be somewhere slightly below. In short, the relevance of Bitcoin Cash in the greater crypto-community has diminished with it's split.
More centralized
While Bitcoin Cash was always criticized for being too centralized the situation is made even more dire with the latest split. Where before there were perhaps four major miningpools on BCH, one might really question the amount of decentralization that is left in either of the remaining forks. Bitcoin SV seems to be pretty much entirely controlled by the miningpool Coingeek, and Bitcoin ABC is almost completely centralized around Bitmain's pools and Bitcoin.com's. Before one might have argued that two opposing camps of miners within the same cryptocurrency ecosystem counts as a form of decentralization but with each of them going their seperate way they essentially decided to become entirely centralized around their own entities.
On BitcoinSV Coingeek alone has a majority hashrate of 54%. On BitcoinABC Bitmain and Roger Ver combined control 64% of the hashrate
It's not just about the miners and hashpower that is more centralized in both coins either. The war rages on financially too obviously, and I'm certain that Bitcoin ABC is dumping their Bitcoin SV to buy Bitcoin ABC with, and vice versa. Both are trying to dump the opposing coin in order to crash it, and prop up the price of their own tokens. If Bitmain owned 1 million BCH before then it is likely they own a lot more than 1 million BCHABC now and a lot less than 1 million BCHSV now. Similarly, the Bitcoin SV team now has proportionally more BCHSV too. So token distribution on both networks centralized significantly too in this process and that is in no way a good foundation for an economy.
Confusion, loss of trust
Other than cold hard numbers, I believe the reputation and integrity of both projects and those visible in the space has been tarnished as well. Even foregoing the unprofessionalism and crazy antics of Faketoshi and Bitcoin Jesus facing off in several rounds of insult-slinging and threats, the whole ordeal has given many people a rather bad taste in their mouths. It cannot be good marketing for either project.Similar to the situation when BTC and BCH split, people are also faced with questions over which is the 'real' BCH and it is getting harder and harder to keep claiming that either fork is 'the real Bitcoin' when it is dilluted even further by forking into two. It does not do the reputation of either project any good at all.
Changpeng Zhao, Slayer of the BCH ticker
The situation is made worse for both BCH successors because of Binance's Changpeng Zhao (CZ)'s latest announcement that neither Bitcoin Cash ABC nor Bitcoin Cash SV will inherit the BCH ticker. Instead, they will keep the BCHABC and BCHSV tickers, which even further distances them from the original BTC ticker that was so hard-fought over last year. With such alien-looking tickers it will be increasingly hard to claim to be the original Bitcoin and since Binance is the world's leading exchange it is quite a setback for both BCH would-be-successors. More than ever before both of them are now 'altcoins'. And as 'just an altcoin' their chances of future success is exceedingly more difficult than as 'we might be the real Bitcoin'.
With the loss of the BCH ticker on the world's largest exchange, it becomes even more confusion and strange that the main Bitcoin Cash reddit and even Bitcoin.com are neither BTC, nor BCH, but rather now BCHABC, which makes no sense at all to anyone new to the space I can assure you.
The situation is not helped by the fact that there are a variety of tickers and ways to refer to Bitcoin ABC and Bitcoin SV on other platforms too. Some exchanges only support one crypto, some the other and some of them both. Not all of them use the same tickers, and let's not even get into the wallets. I wouldn't dare touch my coins if I had any BCH because it seems to me like it is very easy to get mixed up and send coins from one network to a service provider on another network by accident. It's going to take a long time for things to settle down and become less confusing.
The aftermath
While the two sides of BitcoinSV and BitcoinABC fight it out I can't help but wonder about the aftermath of this all. First of all both chains are mining at a big loss and they cannot keep this up forever. What will happen when one side gives up? If Bitcoin ABC is victorious and Bitcoin SV slowly withers away, what will happen to the miners of Coingeek? Will they simply go mine the BitcoinABC chain instead, which belongs to their most hated enemy? I doubt it. Whichever side loses will probably end up mining Bitcoin (BTC) instead (which is more profitable most of the time anyway), therefore strenghtening the Bitcoin (BTC) network which they originally left..
Bitcoin (BTC) also faces a significantly smaller threat in either Bitcoin Cash than it did when it was still one Bitcoin Cash. Instead of one 'this is the real Bitcoin' there are now two, which makes both of them less convincing. It is easy to sway some people into uncertainty and hard to disregard one pretender to the throne, but when there is a bunch of crypto's all pretending to be 'the one true Bitcoin' then it becomes rather easy to disregard the whole lot of them in one sweep.
And let's not forget the hashwar in itself which proves that Bitcoin (BTC) is a lot more decentralized and secure than it's counterparts. Smaller networks such as BCH are, as reality shows us, susceptible to attacks and hashwars due to their smaller hashrate. BCH's total hashrate has always been roughly 4 exahashes, but BTC's hashrate is above 50 exahashes. One major mining power from BTC could in theory swoop in and overtake the entire BCH network, or either or both forks, if they truly wanted. But BTC, by definition of being the largest in hashrate has no bigger brother from whence bigger parties can come down and overtake the network. Because of this the biggest hashrate is per definition the safest, and perhaps even the only safe network. This could indicate that indeed, in the end, there can be only one Proof-of-Work chain that survives - the one with the largest amount of hashingpower.
Winners and losers
In my mind the BCH civil war's biggest casualty is BCH itself. The biggest winner is probably BTC. The runner up is debatable, but surprisingly enough I think it may be Bitcoin SV that is the winner of the two and not Bitcoin ABC even though the situation currently looks reversed. I believe this is the case because Bitcoin ABC has lost a lot of standing, support and reputation compared to where BCH was, so it is a definitive step back for them. While out of the two projects they might be the more serious project with the most integrity and the most hashingpower, I see primarily losses for them on a macro- and meta-level.
BitcoinSV on the other hand, I do not believe is a serious attempt at a fork at all but instead a financial power-play by Craig Wright and Calvin Ayre. It wasn't and is never going to be the 'true Bitcoin' or even a seriously and respectable coin. It is however a multi-billion market cap Bitcoin fork, and they own most of the coins. That represents a value in the billions of dollars, which means they are now incredibly rich - much moreso than they were before. Since BCHABC is the only 'serious' attempt at a crypto one might argue that whatever Bitcoin SV ends up being worth, equals the amount that they managed to successfully hijack of the BCH project.
Think about it this way: Bitcoin Gold is a shitproject, but if I offered you 1 million BTG you would still be incredibly rich. That is essentially what Bitcoin SV did: create a shitcoin that despite being a shitcoin, still has a huge market cap. Trust me, you haven't heard the last of these guys - whatever they lose in electricity costs is probably completely overshadowed by what they gained in this move.
Eventually I believe the blunders of the BCH fork and the dillution that follows will lead to a slow exodus from both projects back to Bitcoin (BTC). Not because they really love BTC so much, but because they've lost faith in the forks and BTC offers no such confusion. I mean no party any true ill will but in a way, I really wish for it to happen too - the Bitcoin community should never have been divided in the first place.
Additional tinfoil conspiracy thought that I don't truly believe, but here goes: If BTC gains the most from this war, then as the Romans used to say Cui bono? You don't have to delve far into social media to come across speculation that Craig Wright is in fact in league with Blockstream and that this is all a plan to destroy BCH. You never know...
