Bitcoin Cash Weekend Affair: Explained

Since the last Thursday, we are experiencing truly phenomenal behavior of the cryptocurrency market. Over the last few days, Bitcoin price significantly went down, whereas Bitcoin Cash skyrocketed up to five times. Due to extraordinary demand for Bitcoin Cash, Bitcoin miners abandoned the blockchain leaving it with 150,000 transactions pending. The affair had a huge impact on a range of crypto exchanges and Changelly as well. Many of our users got frustrated facing abnormal delays and transaction failures. We understand it and sincerely apologize for the anxiety and waiting seemed endless. In this article, we would like to tell you everything as it happened these days.

Miners switch

After the cancellation of Bitcoin’s SegWit2x hard fork, Bitcoin Cash price chart started skyrocketing. As Bitcoin community supposes, it was a speculation pump initiated by main supporters of Bitcoin Cash. In addition to the enhanced way of mining, this campaign provoked interest among Bitcoin miners. Two-thirds of them decided to quit mining Bitcoin and switched to the Bitcoin Cash network. Within several hours, Bitcoin Cash gained more hashpower than Bitcoin.

Meanwhile, with fewer miners left, the Bitcoin network came to a grinding halt. Transaction processing time of Bitcoin dramatically decreased from 5 minutes to 12 hours making users pay outrageous transaction fees in order to shake things up.

Below is the hashrate chart comparing two currencies.

Hullabaloo and the aftermath

It goes without saying that absolute mining hashrate took the demand for Bitcoin Cash to an entirely new level. Only over the last weekend, Changelly processed more than 10,000 transactions with BCH. Due to the enormous workload and overpricing taken to the extreme, we made a painful decision to fail some transactions. We know how it made you unhappy and feel the same way. Currently, we work 24/7 to sort out each issue related and provide necessary assistance.

A lesson to be learned

We’ve learned some things from this week and included new features in our roadmap to implement in the nearest time.

• Increased capacity that will be able to process ten times more transactions at once.
• Enhanced alert system that informs you about possible exchange issues and provides the accurate transaction processing time.
• More support ninjas to help you out at the very moment.

All suggestions and questions are welcome at support@changelly.com