Two Miners Reportedly Executed A 51% Attack On Bitcoin Cash (BCH) Blockchain

Two miners are in the focus of our latest cryptocurrency news for reportedly executing a 51% attack on the Bitcoin Cash (BCH) blockchain. As tweets by Cryptoconomy Podcast host Guy Swann shoed, the two miners were controlling the majority of the mining power on a Proof-of-Work blockchain network.

For those of you who don’t know, a 51% attack happens when someone controls the majority of mining power – acting as the majority block verifier – and preventing other users from mining and reverse transactions.

Even though many jumped in the altcoin news with their assumptions that a 51% attack would be carried out with a malicious intent, the case with the two miners happened as the two mining pools attempted to prevent an unidentified party from taking some coins that – because of a code update – were essentially available for taking.

As Swann said in the podcast, the two miners with majority control of the network – BTC.top and BTC.com – performed the attack in an effort to stop an unknown miner from taking coins that were sent to an “anyone can spend” address after the hard fork of Bitcoin Cash (BCH) in May 2017.

“When the unknown miner tried to take the coins themselves, https://BTC.TOP  & https://BTC.COM saw & immediately decided to re-org & remove these [transactions] TXs, in favor of their own TXs, spending the same P2SH coins, + many others … So just 2 miners, in secret & w/ no trouble, took it upon themselves to remove 2 blocks w/ another’s TXs, & replace with their own,” Swann tweeted.

The two miners and their attack are a topic shared by many best cryptocurrency news sites. However, 51% attacks have always been considered unethical, undesirable and unprofitable option to take away funds as it would require a massive amount of computing power and because of the fact that users would flee.

According to other stats on Coin.Dance relevant to the two miners, BTC.top and BTC.com control 43% of the Bitcoin Cash mining pool together.

Meanwhile, this is not the only mining attack featured in the coming altcoin news. Previously, the Ethereum Classic (ETC) blockchain experienced a 51% attack in January, resulting in a loss of 54,200 ETC.