Exchanges, Startups Pick Sides After the Bitcoin Cash 'Hash War'

Created in November when the blockchain underwent a controversial system-wide upgrade, there remains a segment of the bitcoin cash community that follows a new software protocol called Bitcoin Satoshi's Vision, or BSV. With the remaining community following a competing implementation of bitcoin cash called Bitcoin Adjustable Blocksize Cap, or ABC, the expectation shortly after the split was that one blockchain would quickly overtake the other.

"The ABC version of bitcoin cash has more hashrate, more exchanges, more wallets, more everything. The BSV coin - I wish them good luck - but it's a separate project and it's not bitcoin cash. They have less everything," said Ver.

The original vision of bitcoin cash, still championed by Bitcoin ABC and SV supporters alike, is the creation of a global peer-to-peer payments network.

"There will be one bitcoin. I think that all these other coins - all these thousands of them - will disappear and only bitcoin [SV] will survive and that's bitcoin in its original form."

Straying from the original design of bitcoin in an important way, bitcoin ABC developers implemented a contentious upgrade five days following the bitcoin cash split.

Viewing the traditional guarantee of "Proof-of-work" or the longest running chain as an ideological preference, Luthra explained that in practice reliance on hash power did not hold practicality for smaller cryptocurrencies like bitcoin ABC. As such, he predicted strengthened support from exchanges and businesses exchanging funds on the network as a result of this upgrade.

To Luthra's point, three cryptocurrency exchanges - Coinbase, Bitso and Gemini - have since allocated the bitcoin cash ticker symbol "BCH" to the Bitcoin ABC blockchain.

Outside of these three, other exchanges have enabled support to Bitcoin ABC and Bitcoin SV either allocating the bitcoin cash symbol to Bitcoin ABC or differentiating it from Bitcoin SV as "BAB/BCHABC." These exchanges include but are not limited to: OKEx, Kraken, Poloniex, Bitfinex, and CoinEx.

Though Bitcoin SV is currently unlisted by certain cryptocurrency exchanges, it's value on the exchanges that do allow SV trading has climbed in recent days to sit almost at par with the ABC coin.

With the bitcoin cash hash war having come and gone, the renewed battle between these two camps are unlikely to be solved on the basis of hash power any longer.