RESEARCH
BEQUANT Crypto&Coffee
Last week saw both Bitcoin Cash (BCH) and BitcoinSV (BSV) undergo planned block reward halvings. However, the expected the subsequent adjustment by miners resulted in some degree of hashrate flippening. Furthermore, what is interesting is that BSV’s hashrate was able to make significant retrace from the initial move lower following the halving. The move is likely to be driven by BSV’s “friendly” mining entities in order to prevent any potential 51% attacks. Bitcoin is due to undergo its own block reward halving in mid-May and as it stands, 97.3% of the hashrate is dedicated to Bitcoin. As a result, the other chains have a lot of ground work to make up in order to survive after the aforementioned incentive halving. This is where utility of the network will really come into play. In the meantime, metrics such as mining difficulty and hashrate will come under even greater scrutiny. On that note, the next mining difficulty adjustment is expected to be a positive one to the tune of 6.87% In other news, it is worth remembering that the Phoenix upgrade for Ethereum Classic (ETC), which was successfully activated on the Mordor TestNet last month, will be going live on the Kotti Testnet which in turn will lead to implementation on the MainNet in the first week of June. The upgrade, known more formally as upgrade ECIP-1088, is intended to increase the Ethereum Virtual Machine (E.VM) capabilities of Ethereum Classic. The EVM is what underpins the executions of smart contracts on the Ethereum blockchain (ETH). Phoenix will build upon the previous Atlantis and Agharta hard forks that have already improved the compatibility of ETC with ETH. Although originally pencilled in for a March 2020 release, Phoenix appears to have been slightly delayed to allow developers extra time to monitor the rollout in the TestNet phases. The ETC MainNet Phoenix activation will now take place on or around 5 June at block 10_500_839. The big brother that is Ethereum (ETH) has been riding the positive wave ahead of Eth 2.0 release, according to Buterin himself, successful multiclient testnets will have to precede the long-anticipated Phase 0 mainnet launch and the testnets will likely start running in April. As a result, ETH is up 20% month-to-date, while Bitcoin is up 7%. To truly appreciate the investor demand for ETH, one only has to look at Grayscale Investments’ Ethereum Trust (ETHE), which has been trading at 515% premium. The ETHE trust has been created specifically for investors who are willing to pay more for an asset (compared to its market price), because of the strict regulatory oversight they get by acquiring such products – which can potentially help them avoid risk. However, the capital appreciation success story may soon enter some turbulent air, as the success in further transitioning away from Proof of Work (PoW) to Proof of Stake (PoS), will invariably remind miners of the challenges they are about to face when the transition in fact happens. So much so that the competing chain that is ETC may get upside traction yet again, alongside hashrate flippening. It is also worth keeping an eye on Litecoin (LTC) which, after seeing its hashrate plummet in March, has staged an impressive recovery and is again approaching ETH’s hashrate. Litecoin has been a strong performer, seemingly benefiting from hedge related flows related to Bitcoin, BCH and BSV.
