A Possible New BCH Fork; Attack(s) on ETC; Bitcoin Billionaire Transfer; Twitter Hacker Revealed

Today’s episode will cover events happening the week ending August 7th, 2020. We will be talking about a potential new BCH split, a 51% attack on ETC, a whale of a Bitcoin transfer, and the Twitter hacker has been revealed – we’ll discuss how his identity was discovered! More @ Talk.Bitcoin.Tax @(00:39) A Possible New BCH Fork @(03:42) Attack(s) on ETC @(05:02) Bitcoin billionaire Transfer @(06:02) Twitter Hacker Revealed Full Show Notes: (00:39) First up, Bitcoin Cash (BCH). For those unfamiliar, Bitcoin Cash is a cryptocurrency that exists as a result of an August 2017 fork from the original Bitcoin. Subsequently, in 2018, BCH was forked into two different versions of the coin; for all intents and purposes, these two resulting coins are named Bitcoin ABC (Adjustable Blocksize Cap) and Bitcoin SV (Satoshi’s Vision). It can be a bit confusing but, as Coinmarketcap says, “Bitcoin ABC became the dominant chain and took over the BCH ticker”. So, when we discuss BCH, we are referring to Bitcoin ABC. Bitcoin SV is referred to as BSV. Both the 2017 and 2018 forks were largely a result of disagreements among the miners, developers, and supporters of the cryptocurrency and the underlying blockchain technology. BCH, historically then, is somewhat fraught with disagreement between camps. The history here matters because it seems to be potentially repeating itself once again, and a new BCH fork is possible (depending on who you ask). On Thursday, Amaury Séchet, a leading developer of BCH, released a blog post detailing the plan for a November 2020 Bitcoin Cash Network Upgrade. The plan lists “two primary improvements… a change to the Difficulty Adjustment Algorithm…[and]…the addition of a new Coinbase Rule…[which states that] all newly mined blocks must contain an output assigning 8% of the newly mined coins to a specified address.” According to Séchet, the rule “fully aligns the incentives of Bitcoin ABC with the sustainability and security of the network…[and] ensures that those developers risk the immediate loss of their own wealth should they make decisions that harm the overall value and validity of the network.” Séchet closes his plan by stating “While some may prefer that Bitcoin ABC did not implement this improvement, this announcement is not an invitation for debate”. This did not sit well with everyone involved in BCH and day later, on Friday, a joint statement was released by a “group of notable BCH miners”. The statement says “With ABC’s new proposal… it appears they are not interested in further discussion. In the interest of mutual respect, we will honor their wishes and will no longer engage in debates. Our group has already completed the process of switching to BCHN. We have been testing and running BCHN and find that it offers technical superiority in functionality and for block creation compared to Bitcoin ABC. With the existence of BCHN as a mining node, we do not expect any sensible miner to choose to receive 8% less mining revenue.” The TLDR here is that another split could be occurring, which would again potentially result in two types of BCH – this this case, it seems as though the split coins would be dubbed Bitcoin ABC (the Séchet camp) and Bitcoin Cash Node (BCHN, the miners opposed to the aforementioned “improvements”). We’ll stay on top of any developments in the story – with the planned BCH November upgrade quickly approaching, the developments are occurring rapidly. By time this episode has released, the two camps may come to a compromise, or…maybe a new camp will emerge! — (03:42) On the topic of forked coins, last week, a classic 51% attack occurred on Ethereum Classic (ETC). This week, it was revealed that 807k ETC worth $5.6 million was stolen in the attack. According to a report by blockchain analyst and CTO of Bitquery Aleksey Studnev, the attacker spent 17.5 BTC, or $192,000, in order to acquire the hash power for the attack. To make things even worse, a