This drives me crazy. Woke up much too early, and what is in my mind? Something about Bitmain. Urg.
But first: A 64mb Block! Awesome! This is about 50x as much as BTC, and 3x as much as we've seen in the August stresstest. I think there has never been a live blockchain with that much volume. This is the hugest success we Big Blockers ever had!
And if you look at reddit ... they have become the new small blockers. What a pity.
I have a very weak VPS node, I think 2 core, 2gb ram. And it is still alive and up to the chain. I was very surprised when this node passed the first stresstest.
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Now ... Bitmain. I think it's certain that BCH can not survive without Bitmain. I'm very surprised how they act.
According to their IPO prospects they had close to 1mio BCH. This was their strongest asset, and they have already been largely overinvested. This puzzled (and concerned) me when I read it the first time. The prospect is some month old, I think they rebalanced and sold large chunks of BCH, but low market liquidity makes it unlikely that it was more than 100k or 200k.
So ... what did Bitmain lost since thursday? BCH as a whole sunk from $520 to $320, the "new BCH" even on $220. This is a loss of something like $150-300mio. They also suffer from decreased BTC price, and they burn money to mine BCH at a loss.
Maybe they sell 800k BSV, but this will not give so much, maybe $50mio, if not less, break the market and basically serve as an airdrop for an interesting new (or very old) coin. I would love it.
Their strategy was a disaster. Maybe they expected BCH price to moon, when the "upgrade" was "successfull". But it didn't happen. Even if the ABC chain is safe and widely acknowledges as "the original BCH", it will not happen. The fork hurt BCH like crazy. Bitmain acted dumb, unbelievably dumb for such a successful company. They burn money to harm BCH, and it was predictable that this happens. At least they should have been aware of the risk.
And if you add that in one or two years mining-reward halves again - they are more or less dead, if no PoW currency quadripples in value - they should safe money, not burn it, or, at least, invest in something that makes sense. They absolutely need to lessen dependance of asicable PoW-currencies.
Why do they gamble with hundreds of millions?
There must be something they want to win. Something big. nChain is clear about their intentions. Restoring Bitcoin 0.1, having thousands of patents. Take that like you want - both Satoshi and Faketoshi makes sense, and both would be an absolutely admirable act for the books of history. But Bitmain? What is their goal?
When I said "there will be no fork" I considered these known "Bitmain-Facts" and assumed a rational behaviour. It seems I missed something. Do they have a goal worth all this blood?
Is it this wormhole thing? I don't know much about it, and I have no clue why they need it so terribly that they are willing to burn hundreds of millions for it.
My guess is that they try a similar strategy as Blockstream: Demonstrate the ability to control a major blockchain protocol, and use this as an asset to get money from investors. This would make their bleeding a kind of investment. But it is still highly risky, while the precise goal remains unclear. As what can they sell their BCH-chain to the market?
A speculation would be that they promise to deliver the digital Yuan, powered by chinese Mining-Farms. Maybe even as a new world currency, to think big. Large mining facilities in inner China fuel the new world money.
Wormhole could be a perfect match for this venture: Bitmain holds BCH, and whenever the chinese Government, a chinese bank, or some foreign power, like a bankrupted nation, needs digital Yuan, they must buy a BCH from Bitmain, so that a new token can be created. That would be not a bad plan ... but not what I would support. But it is all pure speculation.
I just don't know why they do it, while it seems important. I don't like this.
