This was on cointelegraph this morning.
https://cointelegraph.com/news/how-close-did-bitcoin-get-to-disastrous-chain-death-spiralbased on an August article.
http://bitcoinandtheblockchain.blogspot.co.za/2017/08/chain-death-spiral-fatal-bitcoin.htmlYou don't need to read those, I am summarizing.
The idea is now that there are two coins competing for the same mining resources, then it is theoretically possible for enough hashing power to leave BTC that the next difficulty adjustment is postponed for weeks.
Bitcoin cash has the option to dynamically adjust difficulty, so it is not susceptible to this problem.
The next part of the hypothesis is that if block times stretch out, then people will be scared out of bitcoin and start to dump. IMHO, the cause and effect here is small to nonexistent.
What we saw in the recent attack was about 50% of the hashing power disappear - mostly to bitcoin cash.
This was accompanied by a denial service attack that flooded the bitcoin network with tiny transaction.
The article posits that if the bitcoin cash pump had been sustainable, then the hashing power would have stayed away and possibly drawn more hash power, thus further extending the block time.
And it is true that for many of us, the long transaction times and high costs are very annoying. I have one sitting out there.
The attack was well timed to start right after a difficulty adjustment.
When the full retrospective of the attack is published, IMHO, BTC will come out very well. It looks like block times are back to normal. Most of the hashing power is recovered. Both coins are consolidating at the current level while all of this plays out.
IMHO, the future for BTC is good.
This does not remove the obligation on the bitcoin core team to continue to work the scaling issues. But it appears they have the runway to come up with reasoned solutions and not be panicked into a poory developed solution.
