Since the launch of Bitcoin Cash, BCC in Chinese exchanges or BCH in overseas Exchanges, the war for hashrate has begun. How is the situation going to evolve? AlbertTheKing, a veteran Bitcoin speculator and analyst in China, shares his theoretical deduction on the potential mayhem brought by Bitcoin Cash to the Bitcoin network, claiming that BCC is capable of delivering critical strike to the network security of BTC. The theory soon triggers heated discussion on the gaming result between BTC and BCC.

His assumption is based on two important factors:

1. BTC and BCC share mining facilities.

2. The kinky (or genius) difficulty adjustment mechanism of BCC.

Jimmy Song explains how Bitcoin Cash adjust difficulty:

Median Time Past of the current block and the Median Time Past of 6 blocks before has to be greater than 12 hours.

If so, it gets 20% easier to create proof of work. In other words, miners can find blocks 20% easier.

Median Time Past (MTP) is just the median of the last 11 blocks. That is, put the last 11 blocks in time order and pick the middle one. This is used because sometimes blocks mined later have earlier time stamps (some technical reasons related to different clocks).

Such particular design makes the game very interesting and hard to predict. But it is tempting to try.

Alberttheking’s post explains the roadmap of how to launch the strike.

How to affect the network performance of Bitcoin? And what’s the most straightforward and efficient way?

The answer is simple: bribing miners. If there is a new coin that is more profitable than mining Bitcoin, miners would direct their hashrate to the new coins out of economic interest. Suppose the majority of hashrate abandon the original network, the block generation interval will be extended, resulting in a more congested mempool and worse user experience. Thus the critical strike is accomplished.

No one has launched such an attack due to the lack of motive. Now that Bitcoin Cash is born, the motive has emerged.

AK then explains the details on how the strike is constituted and how its implemented.

“Miners will always follow the most profitable blockchain. If mining BCC is more profitable, miners will abandon the Bitcoin network.”

He even suggests a date when the attack takes place.

I need to emphasize that price of BCC is not stable at the moment. And the launch of hashrate strike requires futures trading. After BCC futures are listed on OKEX, BCC supporters may initiate the attack (they will short on futures first to lock profits). If my conspiracy theory is true, the day when BCC futures is listed will be the day that BTC take a nose dive. BTC supporters will soon realize that BCC is the eternal short options for BTC if they are rational enough.

Sadly, the outcome of the hashrate war could be a no-win situation as both blockchain will become slow in block generation due to the constnat migration of hashrate.

His post arouses tens of reposts and comments.

A critical flaw in his assumption is pointed out by Jiang Zhuoer, operator of BTC.TOP.

“The retarget window is not fixed at 14 days. It depends on when 2016 blocks are mined. If hashrate increases by 10 times, the retarget may happen in 1.4 days.”

What is the point of No-win situation?

AlbertTheKing：

I guess the main purpose is to paralyze BTC first and then assess the situation later. Anyway, it should not be difficult for BCC to change codes.

Logxing:

Following the same logic, BCC2 coin may be created to sabotage the network security of BCC. The forking may continue and eventually all coins adopting the same algorithm will be buried together. I am still doubtful to the “lowering difficulty adjustment” method.

What are your predictions?