What's Next for Bitcoin Cash? Shocking news...

To begin, there are currently only a few mining operations, the largest an unknown actor (or pool of actors) controlling roughly 90 percent of the hash power on bitcoin cash.

Some speculate the motivation driving these miners is a purely ideological devotion to bigger blocks, the reason bitcoin cash supporters split from bitcoin in the first place. (Bitcoin cash boasts 8MB blocks, as opposed to 1MB blocks on bitcoin).

Others believe it's more personal, and there's reason to suggest it could be both.

ViaBTC, the first mining pool to enable its miners to support bitcoin cash, has called for the developers of bitcoin's most popular software implementation, Bitcoin Core, to be fired. Further, Jihan Wu, co-CEO of Bitmain, one of the world's largest miners, spends much of his day sending memes mocking the team on a popular bitcoin cash WeChat thread.

The anecdotal evidence would suggest then that "political" or "ideological" motivations are also coming to play a role in mining. After all, there is always a certain intangible value to validating your own arguments.

Others, though, believe there's more at play than simply a digital "I told you so," and that miners are banking on bitcoin cash's future profitability.

The mining loop

Another question is how to gauge "profitability," as there are many factors that contribute to how profitable it is to mine any cryptocurrency. This includes its price, how hard it is to mine ("difficulty") and how often block rewards are released.