Bitcoin Cash and the Second Big Bang

I once thought, what would happen if if Bitcoin (BTC) was created in a world already cryptocurrency literate. I and you may not have time to taste the joy of a sudden "early adopter" due to the rapid increase of bitcoin value (today reaches Rp55 million per BTC). Bitcoin, from the beginning until now still has the same concept of work, although it has significantly improved in terms of features and performance. Not only in terms of price, I also think how the first miners to do the mining process by using their own computer or even home laptop and get bitcoin tokens which at that time there is no price. With such a low difficulty (and low market value), it is understandable if Bitcoin takes several years to become a global phenomenon.

Big Bang
Bitcoin's first appearance in 2009 can be described as a big bang. Big bang is one of theories of the emergence of the universe that started from the incident of two stars, and the resulting explosion then evolved, among them into a world that we know today. The emergence of Bitcoin boiled in cryptographic environments, no wonder it has a strong cryptographic base. Satoshi Nakamoto wrote a whitepaper that is now considered a "mandatory reference" to research on cryptocurrency and blockchain. Bitcoin is not only the origin of thousands of existing (and ever present but extinct) cryptocurrency and blockchain technologies that also attract more and more people to be implemented in other fields.

Big Bang Second
The rise of Bitcoin, I think, is not only interesting from the originality of a well-implemented idea in the Bitcoin system, but about how to adopt this new system into a society that has never seen or heard of a Bitcoin-like system. As I have said before, what happens if Bitcoin is raised in the current state. Until finally Bitcoin Cash (BCH) appears. Unlike branching Bitcoin protocols in general that make their own block genesis block, BCH "divides itself" by bringing in all the information previously available. This process is similar to the Ethereum Classic (ETC) split from Ethereum (ETH) and Zclassic (ZCL) from Zcash (ZEC). It's just that, because Bitcoin has tremendous market value and the media spotlight that is so dazzling due to the unresolved scalability debate, BCH also gets a small portion of the news. On August 1, 2017 a group of miners decided to make a new BCH coin by including a protocol that they thought was better than the protocol offered by Bitcoin. Then we get the Second Big Bang.

What is experienced by BCH can be said as a loop over the incidence of the emergence of Bitcoin 8 years ago, of course with the current conditions. Just like Bitcoin at the beginning of the system, there will certainly be parties who master the computing power of more than 51%. Satoshi, for example, is believed to mine hundreds of blocks believed to garner up to 1 million BTC. Bitcoin network stability does not happen instantly. The relatively uniform mining forces of today are the result of consensus of the mining pool owners who make adjustments once their mining power reaches a certain level compared to the total power in the network. BCH also experienced a similar thing. Since not all miners support BCH, only those who support BCH alone remain, whose numbers can be counted on the fingers and by chance they have unequal mining power. The breakdown of mining power between these two systems (BTC and BCH) causes instability in the network not only BCH but also BTC, but since the number of miners switching to BCH is much smaller than that of the BTC, the wave of instability is felt in the BCH network . BCH still needs time to gain equilibrium in the system even though this work may require considerable effort due to potential attacks that can be caused by existing miners currently mining BTCs. The sudden movement of miners BTC to BCH (or vice versa) will cause waves for both systems, due to the shifting equilibrium. This could be a loss and future problem for two systems that share the same consensus method.

In addition to network instability, system adoption by BCH users can also be seen as a looping BTC adoption process. It is only natural that blocks larger than 1MB are not always successfully created, as there are fewer transactions (one example of BCH or BCC block explorer can be seen on Blockdozer.com) when compared to its BTC sibling who has a large user base . BCH still needs time to achieve the critical mass or the minimum critical time required to block more than 1 MB in size can always be created.

If both of these systems have been stable, then it is worth the wait for their gait in enlivening the world of cryptocurrency.