Bitcoin Cash Returns to Profitability Amid Mining Adjustments

The relationship between bitcoin and bitcoin cash continued to evolve today, with the two blockchain networks competing for miner interest and computing power.

At press time, the bitcoin cash blockchain has seen five downward difficulty adjustments after struggling to produce blocks yesterday.

Blocks 481,878 through 481,882 each pushed down the difficulty (the mechanism that regulates reward release) under the network's "emergency difficulty adjustment rule." When triggered, the mechanism adjusts difficulty down 20%, making it easier for miners to find blocks and claim rewards.

As a result, the difficulty adjustments succeeded in bringing the hash rate to about 10% of bitcoin's hash rate, which made bitcoin cash more profitable to mine – even with the extra fees that bitcoin offers from its increased user base.

Miners have responded, in turn, with those using mining pool platforms like BTC.Top, F2Pool and Antpool once again switching to mine bitcoin cash. At time of writing, blocks were being found every two minutes.

A coming difficulty adjustment is expected in about two days, at which point bitcoin cash should once again be much less profitable to mine than bitcoin.

Chain image via Shutterstock