There is a lot of analysis at the moment about the potential Bitcoin spiral of death:
- Chain Death Spiral - A Fatal Bitcoin Vulnerability
- A tale of Two Coins
- Other articles by the same author.
- Analysis and breakdown by Crypt0: "MUST WATCH VIDEO: How Segwit Could Disrupt Bitcoin / Bitcoin Cash Causing Black Swan Event?"
- Boxmining explanation
- Many other accounts of Bitcoin Segwit proponents propaganda, and vicious attacks (like bans on Reddit) on people highlighting that risk (see /r/bitcoin vs. r/btc, for example).
- Coinbase went offline!
- Bitcoin Cash now more profitable to mine than Bitcoin?
The current rise of Bitcoin Cash and its 24h trading volume surpasses Bitcoin:
Also, it is currently 76% more profitable to mine bitcoin cash vs. bitcoin segwit:
Source: Daily Bitcoin Cash Profitability Against Original Chain Summary
So, the question is:
What to do and where to find safety in these uncertain times?
#1: Move out of Bitcoin as soon as possible!
Bitcoin has the highest fees, the slowest transactions, and rapidly growing pool of unprocessed transactions (mempool). It looks like miners are slowly moving to Bitcoin Cash and Bitcoin Segwit is loosing hash power. There's no doubt in my mind that the collapse of Bitcoin Segwit is imminent. Get out while transactions still are going through.
As of today (Aug 19, 2017), the fees are as follows (in USD):
- Bitcoin (BTC): $4.177
- Ethereum (ETH): $0.446
- Bitcoin Cash (BCH): $0.177
- Litecoin (LTC): $0.167
- Dash (DASH): $0.138
Source: Bitcoin, Ethereum, Bitcoin Cash, Litecoin, Dash, Monero Avg. Transaction Fee historical chart
#2: If you value stability and predictability, choose Litecoin.
It has all advantages of Bitcoin and Bitcoin Cash combined, very stable price, very low transaction fees. It's widely accepted on worldwide exchanges.
#3: If you want to make money and accept high risk, choose Bitcoin Cash.
It has proven that increasing the block size to 8Mb was the right decision, the network has survived and has the potential to thrive and overtake Bitcoin Segwit. Fast and cheap transactions, higher mining profitability than Bitcoin.
The disadvantage is liquidity: not many exchanges and wallets support BCH yet but the situation is rapidly improving.
#4: If you want speed and the lowest fees, choose Dash.
Dash is gaining respect with its over 40% rise today, as the money is moving out of Bitcoin:
5. Dash Dash $2,472,877,290 $329.65 7,501,433 DASH $154,051,000 41.68%
#5: If you want to take advantage of the upcoming Metropolis fork and the expected price rise, choose Ethereum.
Ethereum is well respected and adopted by countless startups (ICOs), banks, technology companies, it is here to stay and definitely will rise in price as the expected technical improvements land. The disadvantage is higher transaction fees and slow transactions.
So, there you go! My analysis of the post-Bitcoin dominance world! Hope you enjoyed, please resteem and post comments.
EDIT (Aug 20, 2017): "It is currently 128.5% more profitable to mine on the Bitcoin Cash blockchain." (https://cash.coin.dance/blocks)
EDIT (Aug 23, 2017) "It is currently 127.2% more profitable to mine on the original chain."
So it looks like indeed the mining difficulty corrections kicked in on both sides. Apparently as much as 30% of mining power of Bitcoin Segwit switched to Bitcoin Cash at some point.
Conclusion: It seems now unlikely that the "chain death spiral" will occur.