April 30, 2019 | AtoZ Markets - For the past week, a mysterious Satoshi Nakamoto miner has been mining cryptocurrency again. This time this is not Bitcoin, but Bitcoin Cash (BCH). Some have speculated this is the beginning of the new Bitcoin SV Hashrate war - a conflict that began last year during the Bitcoin Cash/Bitcoin SV hardfork.
Satoshi Nakamoto miner dominates in Bitcoin Cash mining
Around a week ago an unknown miner or the community of miners entitled as
Satoshi Nakamoto collected more than 35% of the BCH hashrate. By Monday morning their mining dominance on the Bitcoin Cash blockchain reached 44%. It is worth noting, that when miners acquire 51% of a blockchain’s hashrate, they can launch a double-spending attack, which also called “51% attack”.
More than four months ago, Ethereum Classic (ETC) came under such a burden when unknown assailants reorganized the blockchain platform. From there, they were able to "double spend" or in other words steal about 88,500 ETC. If somehow an attacker captures 51% of the hash power of the network, double spending can happen, in this case, theft of Bitcoin Cash coins.
Is Craig Wright a Satoshi Nakamoto miner?
According to the Coin Dance data ‘Satoshi’ is currently in control of up to 40% of the Bitcoin Cash (BCH) hashrate. That percentage raised up last week when he had roughly 35% of the hashrate. The crypto community suggests that this so-called ‘Satoshi Nakamoto’ miner is notoriously known Bitcoin SV supporter Craig Wright.
After the weird movement of hashrate, the crypto community's suspicion immediately fell on self-proclaimed Satoshi Nakamoto, and his Bitcoin SV team members: Calvin Ayre and CoinGeek.
One user of the Bitcoin Cash Reddit users suggested that the BSV crew were trying to manipulate the price of BCH: “I’m willing to bet it’s hashpower ran by Coingeek et ell which is trying to pull the same trick as before: first amass BCH by mining it over time, then trying to “flip” it with the state-friendly BSV by exchanging all the mined coins at once for BSV, thus triggering a crash in the BCH price while attracting money from speculators into BSV.”
BCH team takes measures after Bitcoin SV Hashrate war
Back in 2018, when the Bitcoin Cash hardfork happened, the BCH team took some precautions against possible attacks from the Bitcoin SV team. The group decided to modify BCH blockchain and apply so-called re-org protection technology.
Such a new feature of the blockchain stops attackers from reorganizing the blockchain and creating a new illegitimate chain. However, there’s still a chance that small, disruptive attacks could be launched with the aim of destabilizing the BCH blockchain ecosystem.
One Reddit user suggested: “My guess is they will go for a minor re-org (maybe 6 blocks) to claim that BCH is no better than BSV, even though they self-inflicted their re-org. They’d be doing this for purely for show, for bad PR against BCH, unless they are really mining to sustain their BSV operations.”
Satoshi Nakamoto miner and ‘BoomBoomBoom’ user are the same people?
The sudden appearance of an unknown miner under the nickname “BoomBoomBoom” caused even more suspicions and questions. As indicated in the Reddit message, it is impossible to prove that “BoomBoomBoom” and “Satoshi Nakamoto” are the same person or the group of people.
However, the connection of both miners is indicated by the sudden disappearance of one when another appeared. Moreover, the crypto community believes that there is a very small likelihood of two unknown miners suddenly hogging the hashrate within days of each other.
The Bitcoin SV Hashrate war saga continues.
There are more theories around mysterious Satoshi Nakamoto miner and possible new Bitcoin SV Hashrate. One of them suggests that the former Bitcoin miners (BTC) decided to “play” with the Bitcoin transaction fees, rejecting mining operations and subsequently raising the commission.
Then the miners may return to Bitcoins at the right time and collect all the charged transactions with a high commission. Another theory suggests that Satoshi Nakamoto miner is a supporter of Bitcoin Cash.
He might intentionally be trying to raise a commission for transactions in bitcoins. This theory became more relevant five days ago — when Satoshi began mining, and BTC fees raised. However, since then, they have fallen by more than 60%.