It was necessary to invest almost two hours to mine block 630,001. The price, hash rate and mining difficulty of Bitcoin Cash look stable, at the moment.
Bitcoin Cash, a cryptocurrency born after a Bitcoin fork in 2017, has just undergone its first halving. The mining of block 630,000 of this chain occurred at 8:19 in the morning (-4:00 UTC) last April 8th, 2020.
When this event occurs, there is a reduction in the issuance of new coins per block by half. In other words, if each new block in the chain issued 12.5 new BCH before the halving, each mined block will now issue only 6.25 new BCH. This protocol starts from the original Bitcoin code and occurs every 210,000 mined blocks (approximately every four years).
Bitcoin Cash after First Halving
In the beginning, there was some uncertainty in the Bitcoin community, since it was necessary to invest almost two hours to mine block 630.001. However, the Bitcoin Cash network is stable at the moment.
Thereafter, the production of blocks gradually reached the normal rate of one new block every 10 minutes, on average. However, hours before the halving, there was a reduction in the production time of new blocks by almost half, averaging between 12 and 15 blocks per hour. This occurred although the BCH network adjusts its difficulty of mining with each new block mined, instead of every 2016 blocks, as in the case of Bitcoin (BTC).
After its first halving, the Bitcoin Cash hash rate has not yet experienced drastic drops, contrary to expectations. The BCH hash rate has fluctuated between 2.4 PH/s and 5 PH/s in recent weeks and between 3.3 PH/s and 4.8 PH/s in the last few days, according to data from Coin Dance.
Some people consider that only a 100% price increase or a significant reduction in mining difficulty would prevent an exodus of miners. However, the Bitcoin Cash network has not yet fulfilled this prediction. According to data from Coin Gecko, the price of BCH at the time of writing this article is USD 263 and its fluctuations have kept pace with the overall market in recent days, so the price is not what has kept BCH miners in this network.
The most surprising thing when analyzing the statistics of Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash and Bitcoin SV is that mining BTC right now is 80% more profitable than mining BCH, according to Coin Dance. This makes it even more curious that, until now, there been no stampede of Bitcoin Cash miners towards Bitcoin.
Upcoming Reductions in Cryptocurrency Issuance
Approximately another four years remain until the next Bitcoin Cash halving to take place. However, Bitcoin (BTC) is just a few blocks from its next halving and Bitcoin Cash Satoshi’s Vision (BSV had its first halving last April 9th. Regarding the third halving of Bitcoin, the original cryptocurrency, it should occur on May 11th.
The same as happened with Bitcoin Cash, the issuance of BSV and Bitcoin will drop to 6.25 per mined block. Even though BCH and BSV are much newer cryptocurrencies than Bitcoin, all three share their pre-fork history and part of their code.
By Alexander Salazar
