I think it is human nature for people to cheat if the cost is small and the reward is large.
I ask myself, was it costly for big blockers to fork the chain to get BCC? At present I can't see much cost on the big blocker side. Maybe a loss in reputation for the moment. The reward was immense. They already got their optimal/profitable version of bitcoin that they can put their 100's of millions of equipment towards. The cost/reward explains why the hard fork took place despite the consensus to do segwit2x.
Then the next question is whether the big blockers will pull their resources from BTC. The cost would be another stain on their reputation, public outcry, the market would take a hit as BTC grinds to a halt. Since BTC doesn't have difficulty adjustment like BCC a sudden pull back by big blockers will not end well. The rewards are immense for them. Their version will moon and replace BTC as Bitcoin and they can profit and dictate Bitcoin's future, no more appeals and consensus reaching with Core devs. The cost/reward does indicate to me that this has a good chance of taking place.
I ask myself, was it costly for big blockers to fork the chain to get BCC? At present I can't see much cost on the big blocker side. Maybe a loss in reputation for the moment. The reward was immense. They already got their optimal/profitable version of bitcoin that they can put their 100's of millions of equipment towards. The cost/reward explains why the hard fork took place despite the consensus to do segwit2x.
Then the next question is whether the big blockers will pull their resources from BTC. The cost would be another stain on their reputation, public outcry, the market would take a hit as BTC grinds to a halt. Since BTC doesn't have difficulty adjustment like BCC a sudden pull back by big blockers will not end well. The rewards are immense for them. Their version will moon and replace BTC as Bitcoin and they can profit and dictate Bitcoin's future, no more appeals and consensus reaching with Core devs. The cost/reward does indicate to me that this has a good chance of taking place.
Oh mining BCH is definitely costly right now. And I'm not talking about reputation here but cold. Hard. Cash.
According to coin.dance the BTC chain is currently more than twice as profitable as the BCH chain - https://cash.coin.dance/blocks
But it seems like they don't account for the slow BCH block times, meaning it's probably much worse than that.
Let's do the math.
There's currently ~144 BTC blocks / day, 12.5 BTC per block, USD 3100,- each. That gives us 144 * 12.5 * 3100 = USD 5,580,000,- divided amongst miners per day.
On the other hand we have ~19 BCH blocks / day, 12.5 BCH per block, USD 230,- each. That gives us 19 * 12.5 * 230 = USD 54,625,- divided amongst miners per day.
So unless only 0.97% of former BTC miners have pointed their hashpower towards BCH they are bleeding money as we speak. If say 5 * 0.97% = 4.85% of former BTC's hashpower is pointed towards BCH right now they operate at only 1/5th of the profits that they could gain from the BTC chain. That means collectively more than USD 200k each day that could be gained by mining BTC instead.
So yeah, either BCH's hashpower is freakishly small or they currently pay with much more than just their reputation.
Wrong. Only the difficulty is the relevant part for mining profitability.