Bitcoin Cash Splits into ABC and SV Chains
Bitcoin Cash officially splits into Bitcoin ABC and Bitcoin SV competing chains, with ongoing hash war affecting Bitcoin network security and market sentiment.
On November 15, 2018, Bitcoin Cash definitively split into two incompatible chains—Bitcoin ABC (BCHABC) and Bitcoin SV (BCHSV)—with competing factions mining separate cryptocurrencies and launching attacks against rival chains. The Bitcoin Cash civil war had significant implications for Bitcoin despite being formally separate, as it validated Bitcoin's conservative governance approach and potentially affected network security through mining resource diversion.
The Bitcoin Cash split represented the most contentious and destructive cryptocurrency hard fork to date. Unlike Bitcoin's August 2017 split with Bitcoin Cash, which had been relatively orderly with both chains quickly establishing separate identities, the November 2018 Bitcoin Cash division involved both sides claiming to be the legitimate continuation and directing mining resources to attack competitors.
Roger Ver backed Bitcoin ABC while Craig Wright, who controversially claimed to be Satoshi Nakamoto, led Bitcoin SV. The hash war saw mining pools redirecting computational power from profitable mining to attacking rival chains, demonstrating the economic irrationality that could emerge from ideological conflicts.
For Bitcoin's ecosystem, the Bitcoin Cash chaos provided several lessons. It validated Bitcoin's high bar for consensus changes and conservative governance—while some had criticized Bitcoin Core's slow and cautious development process, the Bitcoin Cash disaster showed the costs of easier hard forks and more aggressive protocol changes.
The split also highlighted the importance of maintaining community cohesion and avoiding contentious changes that could fracture consensus. Additionally, the hash war demonstrated that proof-of-work security could be weaponized in conflicts between chains, raising questions about what happened when competing factions had substantial mining resources.
For Bitcoin markets, the Bitcoin Cash split contributed to continued negative sentiment and price declines throughout November.However, it also strengthened Bitcoin's dominance relative to alternatives, as the Bitcoin Cash civil war damaged the credibility of those arguing for aggressive on-chain scaling through large blocks.