It’s been an interesting past few weeks for Bitcoin.
First, there was the halving. Then an early miner from 2009 initially believed to be Satoshi Nakamoto moved 50 Bitcoin, 10 of which were distributed amongst wallets, one of which purportedly belongs to Coinbase.
Most recently, another early Bitcoin miner from 2009/2010 with access to tens of millions worth of BTC signed a transaction indicating that he is still around.
Some say that these events are a bad thing because they show that old holders that were believed to have lost their Bitcoin are still around. Assuming these holders are looking to sell BTC, this potentially increases the market supply of BTC, thus depressing the equilibrium price should market demand stay constant.
Though one top cryptocurrency investor that the recent activity is actually a positive sign.
Why This Is Bullish for Bitcoin
The owner of the tens of millions worth of Bitcoin signed the following message with his private key:
“Craig Steven Wright is a liar and a fraud. He doesn’t have the keys used to sign this message. The Lightning Network is a significant achievement. However, we need to continue work on improving on-chain capacity. Unfortunately, the solution is not to just change a constant in the code or to allow powerful participants to force out others. We are all Satoshi.”
“It’s actually bullish because it means a miner of BTC since the earliest days still believes strongly in the Bitcoin roadmap and direction of the protocol,” Su Zhu wrote.
BTC Is Winning the Hash War
This early miner’s support for Bitcoin is indicative of the trend BTC is taking over the competing forks.
As reported by Bitcoinist previously, ARK Invest crypto-asset analyst Yassine Elmandjra shared that Bitcoin Cash has seen a strong blow after it experienced its halving in April of this year. BCH is so fundamentally week, Elmandjra explained, that he is surprised the asset “hasn’t seen a large scale attack yet.”
There are three leading factors he cited to back this assertion: Bitcoin Cash’s network hash rate has dropped 30% since the halving (dramatically lower than that of BTC), network usage measured in U.S. dollar terms is at all-time lows, and it costs less than $10,000 per hour to 51% attack the network.
Bitcoin Cash is not looking healthy:
-Hashrate down 30% since halving (& only accounts for ~2% of SHA256 hash)
-Economic throughput at all time lows
-Fees are .05% of miner rev (<$100/day)
-Theoretical 51% attack costs <$10k/hrSurprised we haven't seen a large scale attack yet
— Yassine Elmandjra (@yassineARK) May 23, 2020
Of course BCH is far from dead, but Elmandjra fears that the fork could be on its last legs.
Bitcoin Satoshi’s Vision has seen similar fundamental weakness, on-chain data suggests. BitInfo suggests that BSV’s hash rate is also down approximately 30% since the day-of-halving highs.
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