Did that head line give you a chill, I hope so!
While it appears that BCH is taking a strong hold as we saw it pump to new highs last night, even higher than the original trading point reaching a staggering .53BTC each. Lets examine the facts.
The mempool is full for BTC, meaning transactions with a fee of ~12USD are stuck. The current recommended fee is ~$40 USD per transaction. Insane right?
So why is the mem pool clogged up? Simple Miners moved to BCH in an attempt to cash in which leads to longer block times on BTC. A standard block is supposed to be 10 minutes, but block times are in excess of 16 minutes.
With the cancellation of SegWit 2X this is the perfect time for BCH to make a move, however let me clarify. Not a permanent dethroning of BTC. But instead a 2 week window in which time the BTC algorithm will recalculate difficultly and miners will come back to "fast smash" blocks.
Lets be honest, there is over 300BTC with of transaction fees waiting to be picked up by miners on BTC. Do you really believe that will go unanswered? Thats nearly $2m USD for a 24 hour window and accounts for nearly 25% of the total miner income.
Now lets look at our buddy Roger Ver. They say BTC is too big for one person to manipulate. I'm not sure I agree. While I don't always see eye to eye with Roger Ver he is a ruthless capitalist and I love that. So he takes 25,000BTC (~$160m) in BTC and loads it into Bittrex to acquire BCH, of course the price will spike. FOMO (Fear of Missing Out) drives people to invest at prices that are unjustified.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/7cefom/roger_ver_just_sent_25k_btc_to_bitfinex/
Did he dump his newly acquired BCH back on people? Relistically he could have sunk heavy into BCH allowed the rise to happen and then dump back taking his gain is BTC or BCH his choice. It's highly conceivable that be profited more than $1.6m in a 12 hour window.
Do you know why he's smiling? Because he just made more in the last 12 hours than some people will make in a lifetime.
Keep your crypto hand strong!
-IceBurst