Remember the infamous war of words between Roger Ver and
Remember the infamous war of words between Roger Ver and Craig Wright leading up to the November Hard-Fork of Bitcoin Cash network? The Hard-Fork was full of melodrama, accusations, market manipulation, and a few lawsuits.
The last quarter of 2018 was dominated by the news and buzz around the fork and how the two newly formed networks scale and dominate the crypto market. The initial war was definitely won by the Roger Ver led Bitcoin Cash, be it the number of blocks mined or the hash power input on the network. Most of the crypto exchanges around the globe announced that they would be recognizing BCH as the original forked network and things seemed all over for the self-proclaimed “Satoshi‘ or “Faketoshi‘ as the world calls him.
However as the time progressed and bearish markets trends took over, Craig Wright led BSV network defied all odds to climb the market charts despite other altcoins losing heavily This made headlines as the earlier predictions made by Craig seemed to come true and the most bizarre part was the exact way things started to pan out for the BSV community.
This made me form a conspiracy theory of my own, which we will arrive at after analyzing the events before and after the Hard-fork.
The initial War of Words
When the BCH community decided that it needed to fork from the main network to implement scalability solutions, Craig Wright jumped on the scene to claim that his vision for the fork is better than the Roger Ver’s as it is based on the original Satoshi vision.
This divided the community into two sides, one that was being led by the original BCH community and wanted to implement the changes in the original network for better scalability, while Craig wright’s BSV network was a completely different chain based on the original Bitcoin White paper.
Both the sides accused each other of manipulating the community and promoted themselves as the true crusaders. The war of words took a new turn when Craig announced that he would put in extra hash power to scale his BSV chain over the original BCH forked chain.
The Events After the Hard-Fork
On November 15 the hard fork finally commences and the main chain was forked into Bitcoin ABC and Bitcoin SV. The bitcoin ABC seemed to be winning the battle as in the first 24 hours, the Bitcoin ABC blockchain mined a number of blocks and the market value also showed the same consistency.
Everyone backing the Roger Ver side made Craig wright realize that he might have to eat his words as Bitcoin ABC was clearly winning. However, Craig Wright being the anti-protagonist that he is was totally undeterred by the criticism seemed to hint that it’s too early to call it a day on him.
In order to counter each other’s dominance, both sides went for unethical means of putting in extra hash power to mine the blocks faster. During the same period, the BSV network recognized two of its own block, which might have led to its delisting. Now people were even more sure that Craig Wright is fighting a lost battle.
However, Craig Wright was unmoved as usual, but people were convinced as the exchanges started to announce their support for the Bitcoin ABC as the original forked BCH network.
The Lawsuit and The Market Manipulation Followed
As things started to look grim for the Craig Wright led side, most of the crypto community was happy that the ugly turn of events has finally come to an end. However, they were quite far from reality, as the United corp filed a lawsuit against Roger Ver and his team for manipulating the fork.
As you know in absence of any real-world entity backing the cryptocurrencies, the market is heavily governed by the media buzz and PR shows. The unfortunate news about the lawsuit led the BCH trade market value crash within 48 hours.
However, the crash of the BCH network was not as weird as the rise of the BSV network, while major cryptocurrencies were on a losing spree, BSV was gaining upward momentum as no one has seen before. While BCH lost 20% of its market cap within 2 hours of the news went public. During the same period, BSV surpassed the BCH for the first time both in terms of trade volume and the price.
This weird phenomenon led many to believe that Craig Wright has played his cards to perfection and dealt the final blow through market manipulation when everything else seemed to fail.
The Conspiracy Theory
BCH network did overcome all the roadblocks to finally become the original forked network as of today, however when I look back at the turn of events throughout November and December, I can’t wrap my head around that the guy who claimed to be the original Satoshi and seems unfazed even after being called out for the lies, and was able to orchestrate one of the biggest scams cum market manipulation in the crypto world.
According to my theory, I believe Craig Wright used his cockiness to make the Roger Ver side go overboard with their hashing input and other means to get ahead of the BSV network. While Craig Wright did the same but in a limited amount.
During the run after the fork, the Roger Ver haters accumulated tonnes of Bitcoin ABC after the fork, and as soon as the news about the lawsuit went public, these whales started dumping their Bitcoin ABC tokens in the market again, making the BCH lose heavily.
During the same period, these whales bought in millions of BSV token shooting its prices to new heights. I mean how do you explain the upward movement of BSV which is marred into controversy, recognized its own block, and the leader is a serial fabricator, there is no way in which BSV could have risen so dramatically amid the falling crypto market.
Come think of it, as we were discussing the crypto trade market is heavily governed by the PR and media buzz, and there was not a piece of single positive news for the BSV, and the downfall for BCH only came after the lawsuit.
Final Thoughts
The bearish market trends have continued right throughout 2018 and have entered the first quarter of 2019. The BCH network is going strong every day and we rarely hear much about the BSV network. However, we as a crypto community must stand against such rhetoric in the future as it brings in a bad light for the community.
Crypto is always promoted as a tamper-proof tech, however, events like these dent the credibility of our claims and even though market manipulation is a reality, I believe with time and improvement in technology we can find a way around it.