The pattern has become evident over the last couple of years. When a competing fork is on the horizon, some people want to create the perception that the current implementation lack scalability and then they will dump thousands of dollars into spam attacks to push their agenda.
The next hostile takeover attempt will be Segwit2X, so we will see a increase in the Mempool building up to this fork and we will also see miners shifting hash power away from BTC mining to strengthen these attacks. < or should I rather say, the miners that are supporting Segwit2X >
Let's say they are successful and people believe their smoke screen, then people from the other side can prove them wrong with the implementation of a better technology. < in my opinion - The LN >
It's dawning on me now that Segwit2X may not be the malicious takeover that I and many others had assumed. At least, it doesn't have to be for the attack to make sense. I'm watching difficulty continue to skyrocket -- 21% increase on the last adjustment. I'm expecting a similar push before the next adjustment.
Consider why Bitmain would collude with the 2X companies to hard fork. The common perception is that it's to remove Core's position in the scaling debate. But this is to forget entirely about Bitmain's pet fork from August. What if the collusion and hash rate increases -- in addition to the spam attacks, which I believe Bitmain is largely recouping through block rewards -- are part of Bitmain's bid to cause mutually assured destruction of BTC and B2X in the November fork?
If they singlehandledly control as much hash power as some have suggested, they can wreak a lot of havoc next month. They can starve the legacy chain (or even stealth 51% attack it too, allowing only whitelisted transactions through). But what people aren't considering is that they can starve the 2X chain, too. What happens then, if e.g. 50-70% of the hashpower drops off both networks after difficulty has been significantly increased?
Enter Bitcoin Cash....
