I'm posting this on behalf of the original author vexz in 8btc.com. Link to his profile:
http://8btc.com/space-uid-10012.html.
The original post was written in Chinese. I translated it to English with the help of Letkor Nigusta (@mrletkor).
----
I'm a Bitcoiner from China. I have come here to bitcointalk.org to inform you the reason of the abnormal LTC hashrate fluctuation.
As we all know, LTC is trying to activate SegWit. However, the progress has now been blocked by LTC1BTC.com and LRC.top as they increased their hashrate by a huge amount on Apr.17. So we guessed that Bitmain had a batch of new assembled LTC miners that will be sold to customers soon, and these miners were causing the hashrate abnormality. Actually, the hashrate of Antpool jumped from 100GH/s to 400GH/s and it suddenly jumped back to normal. To make it less obvious, more than 700GH/s hashrate was moved from Antpool to LTC1BTC.com and then to LTC.top later. This is no accident, we all know that the owner of Antpool, Jihan Wu, and the owner of LTC1BTC & LTC.top, Zhuoer Jiang, are both well known BU supporters. They are closely related with each other and are backed by Bitmain. It's an open secret that these two guys conspired together to make this happen.
Screenshot: the abnormal hashrate jump in Antpool.
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/C9p41UoUQAA0k1c.jpg:largeScreenshot: the hashrate increase in LTC1BTC.com and LTC.top.
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/C9r8dOEXkAAQ534.jpg:largeOn Apr. 18, lots of Bitcoiners in 8btc.com, a famous Bitcoin forum in China, were angry about this scandal and denounced Wu and Jiang. Later on the same day, Charlie Lee was infuriated by Wu & Jiang's plan to block SegWit on LTC and left their internal WeChat group.
While we were guessing on where the huge hashrate came from, we found that the things are going to be really worse than what we expected. Today, Bitmain's sales sent a notification to customers who pre-ordered their LTC miner Antminer L3+. They claimed that there will be a shipping delay of the miners due to firmware bugs. The delivery date is still TBD. Customers can choose to cancel the order, or get daily compensation before the shipment.
In other words, Bitmain is stealing over 700GH/s hashrate from those who bought the miners.
Screenshot: Bitmain's notification of delaying miner shipment.
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/C9r-TBMXsAE3bbA.jpg:largeThis scandal has an extremely bad influence in China Bitcoin community. What I want to say is that most Chinese Bitcoiners support rational Bitcoin upgrades like SegWit and are against BU. But indeed, there are some interest groups supporting BU for their own benefits. There's no way to speak rationally to the evil guys like Wu and Jiang. The only way to make Bitcoin greater, is to completely defeat them.