A new report from BitMEX comparing the transaction volumes of Bitcoin Cash and SegWit since their respective implementations shows that SegWit may be winning the adoption race. While the rates of adoption for both coins have been “reasonably similar,” SegWit appears to have remained ahead of Bitcoin Cash for the past several months.
Data collected by BitMEX shows that there was a sharp spike in Bitcoin Cash’s transaction volume shortly after its launch, while adoption of SegWit increased more gradually. “This is likely to be related to the investment flows and excitement of the new Bitcoin Cash coin, which may have driven short term adoption,” the report says.
However, SegWit adoption overtook Bitcoin Cash on October 31, 2017 - three months after Bitcoin Cash was launched - and has stayed consistently ahead ever since.
“Since the launch of Bitcoin Cash, 6.1 million Segwit transactions have taken place, only 20.1% more than the cumulative number of Bitcoin Cash transactions,” the report says. If the figures are adjusted for the “one month head start” that some argue Bitcoin Cash had against SegWit, “SegWit has 31.5% more cumulative transaction volume than Bitcoin Cash, larger than 20.1% but still reasonably close.”
The report notes that manipulation of these figures could be entirely possible.
A brief history
SegWit was introduced as an upgrade to the Bitcoin protocol in August of 2017. After SegWit appeared on the scene, BTC users were given the option of upgrading their wallets and implementing it. According to the BitMEX report, SegWit provides the benefits of about 41 percent more scale, “assuming no other users also upgrade.”
SegWit has finally locked in on Bitcoin! ?
"What took you so long?" - Litecoin ? — Charlie Lee [LTC] (@SatoshiLite) August 8, 2017
In early August in 2017, Bitcoin Cash presented another sort of solution to Bitcoin’s scalability problems. In fact, BCH presented itself as the ‘real’ Bitcoin, as Bitcoin Cash developer Roger Ver later said. Implementing the Bitcoin Cash hard Fork also required that users upgrade to a new wallet and begin using a new transaction format. Unlike Segwit, of course, the Bitcoin Cash upgrade resulted in the creation of an entirely new coin.
The battle, but not the war: a fight for the long term
The data does seem to suggest that SegWit has been adopted at a slightly faster pace than Bitcoin Cash, although BitMEX acknowledges that “Bitcoin Cash advocates could argue that the Bitcoin Cash token is more about a philosophy of larger capacity in the long term, rather than the speed of the actual increase in transaction volume in the short term.”
Look at the screenshot below, and take one guess:
Which version of Bitcoin do you think is going to catch on? Lol. ? This is why #BitcoinCash. Never #Bitcoin. pic.twitter.com/m2WS3CEqS2 — Scott Rose, Inspirational Nerd (@scotty321) March 6, 2018
Therefore, it is possible that Bitcoin Cash’s trading volume could one day surpass that of Bitcoin should coin adoption increase. However, following widespread rumors of insider trading, whether or not Bitcoin Cash can manage to replace Bitcoin remains to be seen.
