BTCC and HaoBTC Dismiss Rumors of Hard Fork Threat by Chinese Bitcoin Miners

"miners on the move following comments by at least 3 Core devs that the hardfork has no chance of being merged" — HaoBTC (@HaoBTC) July 3, 2016

Late last week, a post on Chinese Bitcoin community website 8btc gained a lot of attention in certain English-language Bitcoin circles, particularly the subreddit /r/btc. The post stated that Chinese Bitcoin miners should band together and push for a hard-forking change to the Bitcoin protocol via a switch in software from Bitcoin Core to Bitcoin Classic.
There has been some confusion in the days after the original ‘Terminator Plan’ was posted on 8btc, as some in the Bitcoin community appear to believe this is a genuine plan agreed upon by Bitcoin miners in China. Bitcoin Magazine has reached out to two Bitcoin mining pools in China, and both have distanced themselves from the plan.
The Numbers Don’t Add Up
When looking over the Terminator Plan, one of the obvious issues with the letter is that the numbers simply don’t add up. The plan would supposedly involve greater than 75 percent of the hashrate coming together to support Bitcoin Classic, but roughly 20 percent of the network (represented by BTCC and BitFury) have made their support for Bitcoin Core rather clear over the past few months. This means that nearly every other Bitcoin mining pool or miner – even those outside of China – would have to be involved in the Terminator Plan for it to be real.

This post was published at Bitcoin Magazine on Jul 07, 2016.