The BCH blockchain underwent its first halving, reducing the block subsidy reward transaction processors earn for powering its network from 12.5 tokens to 6.25 tokens.
So far, the event has met with indifference from traders as the price of BCH failed to breakout and has mostly remained stagnant during intraday trades. Against this backdrop come signs that some leading advocates in the BCH community have now pulled back support for the ill-fated blockchain project.
BCH developer Andre Cabrera posted to Twitter that the open-source, non-custodial web wallet, Bitcoin.com Mint, will no longer be maintained full-time. Cabrera warned the users that “new features and bug fixes will take a while.” He ended the tweet with a plea for support from the community.
An update regarding Mint: it will stay at https://t.co/h6JVzGersA as is, but we will not maintain it full time anymore, so the new features and bug fixes will take a while.
It’s an open source project, help us out:https://t.co/TDvg4SVh30
— Andre Cabrera (@alcipir) April 8, 2020
A small-scale project suddenly ending overnight happens all the time. What makes this case different is controversial BCH evangelist Roger Ver supported the Mint project.
This case marks the second time in recent days that a Ver funded project announced they would scale back. A few days prior, Ver confirmed to another outlet that his Bitcoin.com property would restructure operations and lay off staff after the public departure of its CEO, Stefan Rust.
Ver, who has been accused of being devious and opportunist, is no stranger to making decisions many find as self-serving. His recent moves signal that contrary to what Ver might promote to others, the Bitcoin.com CEO does not feel advancing the BCH ecosystem is worth investing more of his personal money into. Ver is apparently okay keeping the BCH network as is while hoping to lure more unsuspecting members into his failing project.
His new tactic opens the project up to more scrutiny and questions. The first question is, why would anyone process transactions on a network that no longer has a legitimate use case? That leads to the question on: How can BCH miners maintain sustainable business operations processing blocks at a loss.
We can find one answer to both questions by looking at what’s happening with the Monero (XMR) blockchain. XMR has steadily increased in popularity amongst hackers and black market sites for use in illicit activities and directly competing with BCH for the dark market transaction volume. Monero’s community makes no pretenses they intend to use the blockchain for enterprise or commercially regulated purposes.
BCH is primarily has crime coin use case, so mining financially underwater to support the network is a moot point. Some in the community can make up the loss in block reward revenue by the saving or earnings they gain through the illegal activities they obscure from regulators and authorities. For example, the tradeoff for operating $50,000 in the negative could facilitate $2M in money laundering from dark market activities.
Speculation aside, under Ver’s watch the BCH project has long since abandoned Satoshi’s Vision for Bitcoin. Many prominent BCH developers are either leaving the project or engaged in an open civil war amongst one another. When it comes to utility, there is no legitimate commercial case to be made for the BCH blockchain.
For Roger Ver, none of these problems matters. He has a Plan B and is content propping up the BCH blockchain to further his hidden agenda.
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