@Erdogan, and I was dead wrong assuming that TPTB behind Blockstream would actually join 2x to keep at least a sense of control. Here's my prediction:
Prediction of the days and weeks ahead in Bitcoin by awemany
Monday, Oct 9th 2017
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As we're inching closer to 2x, BCH will continue to lose market cap.
Wtihin about a week or two from now, F2Pool will stop signalling NYA, bringing
the signalling rate below 90%. F2Pool will coincidentally tweet something
along the lines of "we have just restarted our pool server", referring to
their earlier tweet that they stopped NYA, but haven't stopped their pool
server yet. /r/Bitcoin will cheer the end of 2x.
This will both cause a slight drop in BTC price as well as a larger drop of
the bitfinex 2X futures vs. the 1X ones to an even more unfavorable ratio. It
will also cause a moderate jump upwards for BCH.
This will also be about rock bottom of the "2X:1X" ratio.
Despite the unfavorable price ratio, none of the large companies (miners or
otherwise) will call NYA into question. They will largely keep their mouths
very tightly shut on NYA until and including the actual fork time.
About a week after that 2x:1x rock bottom and about 3..4 weeks to the
predicted HF date, another exchange will come out with a 1X:2X futures contract
on fair and dependable terms.
The 2X futures price will creep up, slowly first, only to flip in 2X's favor
just days or a week before the fork.
F2Pool will likely tweet something along the lines of 'we also never said that
we _don't_ support NYA to the full extend' and switch signalling on again
around the time 2X:1X reaches parity.
The fork will succeed with vast hash power majority and Core will bring out an
emergency POW fork. With the resulting price fireworks around the time of the
fork. The begin of the next big (huge) adoption rush. Altcoins will deflate or
crash, however you want to call it.
Their resulting CoreCoin will be worth around $100 and then keep dropping.
Many folks on our side as well as on Core's side will say that "Bitcoin has
been captured as BizCoin", feeling that their vision of the true Bitcoin has
been captured by TPTB or any other enemies.
(Whereas it actually shows that money and incentives *do* rule Bitcoin)
More hazy long term prediction:
Blockstream will be closed down in 2018, as it will have served its purpose
and can thus then be deorbited. Many of their employees and members of the
Core team will continue to work on Bitcoin, despite their assertion to the
contrary.
Thoughts that led me to the above predictions:
- The fact that a 3txn/s or a SegWit1x-ed Bitcoin can't go anywhere isn't lost
on *any* of the larger investors either, and also among other things, the fee
market clearly and predictably didn't work. The future of BTC simply cannot
rely on that kind of unpredictable transaction pricing. *All* major
investors are aware of this fact (and likely have been since the beginning),
but some still played the other side in this conflict, to suppress the price
and strengthen the position of their companies vs. the miners in the
Bitcoin ecosystem. They *do* want to have a say on further protocol
development and position their companies as large players in the world of
finance after the upcoming 'disruption'.
- so, in the end, the whole reason for smallblockism was a long play to
suppress the price, load up on BTC and have a say in its future
- In the end, **Nakamoto consensus prevails**
Both 'our' big blocker side (at least those who now overly cheer BCH and
left the mainchain for this spin-off) as well as the small blockers have
lost sight of that to a large extend. Some of the folks on our side argue
that "BCH will overtake BTC" (but by that actively ignoring the mining
majority!) and the other side, well not much must be said about that between
consensus by twitter, chain definition by github, and ruling by developer
decree bullshit.
This might well be by design of the actors directly behind NYA, as well as
the long term strategy of the large investors (DCG etc.) and similar
entities:
**Shake out the extremists on both sides of the battle (those who 'take
their ball and go home') while keeping Bitcoin fundamentally intact and also
dominant enough. (Let the Altcoins grow only until the point where they are
still non-threatening)
This also relies on all important actors believing in the long-term future,
see below. If the two sides fight - the third party that watches this and
pulls the strings profits.**
- Money talks. NYA clearly is the money in Bitcoin.
- The miners are sufficiently fed up with Core's antics to keep sticking to 2x
and signalling NYA (except the F2Pool flip-flopper and some very minor other
pool maybe) even though they are likely (up until the price ratio flip)
quite suspicious of the determination of the rest of the NYA signers to
actually pull through.
- For the investors who played the small blocks side of things, sticking with
NYA is also a way to "rebuild trust" with the miners and thus
psychologically getting them closer ("binding them" !), as the strong
suspicion that Blockstream is a pawn in the game by the other side cannot be
lost on them, to the full awareness of all large parties in the background,
however large they might be.
As the support of the miners is long term very important to build the
ecosystem, the non-mining parties will pull through with the 2x as well (and
are told to do so by their investors in the background).
"Giving this one to the miners" is very helpful and important to secure their
support down the road.
- The big actors know Bitcoin is the future and thus in the end want it to
succeed. They invested in companies, development, marketing and so forth. It
seems very unlikely that they want to kill it.
- Finally, on F2Pool, the F2Pool guy just seems to like to continuously troll
all sides
