With the rewards for BCH miners cut in half once they reached block 630,000 on April 8, the time between generating blocks has slowed.
Not even a day has passed since the Bitcoin Cash halving and already the hash rate has taken a hit and block generation slowed significantly.
Many predicted that at least some miners would abandon BCH and move to more profitable coins like Bitcoin (BTC) after their rewards were halved from 12.5 to 6.25 BCH. But as hash rates rise and fall each day, the data for BCH is open to interpretation.
Fork.lol shows a 60% fall in the BCH hash rate from 4.36 EH/s yesterday to 1.6 EH/s at the time of writing (using a 12 hour average). Coinwarz has it falling from 3.9944 EH/s to 2.4595 EH/s, while Bitcoin.com’s chart actually shows the rate increasing slightly to 3.5 EH/s.
In a report published April 1, Arcane Research said there was a real risk the hash rate would halve along with the cryptocurrency, anticipating “volatile days coming into the halving, and in the immediate aftermath.”
Many in the crypto world were quick to notice a lag between blocks too. The BitMEX research team noted on their Twitter account that the time between block 630,000 and 630,001 was roughly two hours — it typically only takes ten minutes to generate a BCH block.
Finally a block is produced
— BitMEX Research (@BitMEXResearch) April 8, 2020
At press time, 53 blocks have been mined in the past 15 hours, with the time between generation returning to 10-20 minutes.
Bears or bulls for Bitcoin Cash after the halving?
The price of BCH is up more than 17% across the week, but has fallen back 2.5% in the past 24 hours.
Though some are merely focusing on the price, many are concerned about what exactly will happen to the hash rate. While some BCH miners may abandon the coin to get better profits mining BTC, Bitcoin Cash miners have proven in the past they are willing to lose major capital to keep the price up, as they did in the “hash war” of 2018.
A ‘Blockchain Lawyer’ on Reddit summed it up as: “the only thing keeping BCH afloat right now is crypto socialism and irrational miners.”
BTC halving scheduled for May 14
The next BCH halving will happen in 2024, the first of 63 remaining. Bitcoin will experience its own halving in a month’s time.
