For many people keeping an eye on the Novemeber 16 hard fork, the cancellation of the Segwit2X hard fork appears to be a resounding victory for Bitcoin Core aka Segwit1X.
However, I suspect otherwise. I believe the war between Bitcoin Miners and Core Developers is not over yet. In fact, I think the real battle for the heart and soul of bitcoin has only just begun.
Core Developers vs Bitcoin Miners
To understand what's really going on, we need to go back and look at how this whole thing began. At the heart of this scaling debate that raged for years is essentially a battling for control of the Bitcoin system between the Core Developers and the Bitcoin Miners.
Miners want bigger blocks so that they can earn more transaction fees as the bitcoin network scales. Core Developers want to implement Segwit so that Bitcoin can scale via side-chains, bypassing the miners.
They eventually came to a consensus (sort of) known as the New York Agreement.
The NYA or New York Agreement aka Segwit2X
Segwit2X has always been meant as a compromise between Bitcoin Miners and Core Developers. Core gets their Segwit while Miners get bigger blocks.
Miners agree to activate Segwit on 1 August and in return, they get bigger block size via a hard fork in November.
Enter Bitcoin Cash
However, because Miners don't really trust Core since they reneged on the HK agreement earlier on, they created Bitcoin Cash as a backup plan in case they get sabotaged again and Segwit2X fail to activate as promised.
Now that Segwit2X has indeed not activate as per the NYA, the Miners are now left with no choice but to forcibly destroy Bitcoin Core like a cancerous tumor.
Yes, it will be a painful and costly battle but the long term benefits will outweigh the short term pain of a bloody war.
Miners would have preferred that Core supports Segwit2X, but since it didn't happen, the Miners will now have to implement their backup plan by throwing their full support for Bitcoin Cash.
Why Miners will support Bitcoin Cash as the Real Bitcoin
For the miners, a victory secures the long term future of their business model.
Failure to secure a victory however, will mean that the Miners will forever be at the mercy of the Core Developers.
Should Core developers decide later to switch to another POW algorithm, millions of dollars of hardware will be rendered obsolete overnight.
Miners Control Bitcoin, not Developers
Developers were never meant to control bitcoin. Bitcoin is designed to be a decentralized in which the competition between miners keeps the Bitcoin system alive and running.
Miners are never going to invest in a bitcoin system where developers can change the rules at a whim and wipe out millions of their investments.
Bitcoin is not a company like Facebook or Google where developers rule. In the decentralized bitcoin system, developers are actually at the bottom of the food chain, not the top.
Let the Battle begin!
So how can the Miners take back control from Bitcoin Core?
This coup can potentially be accomplished by diverting all hashpower to Bitcoin Cash while simultaneously major Bitcoin Cash supporters like Roger Ver and Jihan Wu will be dumping huge amounts of BTC in exchange for BCH, driving up the value of BCH so that it's profitable to mine while severely crippling the legacy bitcoin network.
This can potentially drive Bitcoin Cash price up to around $2k, while lowering Bitcoin's price to $5k. Even at $2k, Bitcoin Cash will be profitable enough to mine and Satoshi's legacy lives on.
For the rest of us, this temporary chaos will be worth it because we want a Bitcoin that is truly a P2P electronic cash system the whole world gets to use, and not a settlement layer that only serves the elite.
In any case, for people who held bitcoin prior to 1 August, they hold both BCH and BTC so they are not affected as long as they didn't sell any BCH.
P/S: This is not investment advice. Just my 2 cents on what might be going on behind the scene. 😁