As a fork of Bitcoin Cash, Bitcoin SV is one of the most controversial cryptocurrencies to have ever existed in the cryptocurrency industry. Its creation was the result of a clash within the Bitcoin Cash community back in November 2018.
Despite a poor performance throughout 2019 and getting delisted from popular exchanges like Binance and Kraken, BSV started 2020 with a bang. One of the primary reasons why the token gained a lot of notoriety is because of its biggest backer Craig Wright, who is infamous for his claims of being Satoshi Nakamoto.
It’s not just Wright, BSV has garnered a serious fan base with some notable personalities from the crypto community. Online gaming entrepreneur and founder of the BSV news and mining company CoinGeek, Calvin Ayre is one of the infamous BSV proponents. CoinGeek and TAAL control around 75% of the total BSV hashing power; this is one of the reasons why BSV is addressed as a centralized cryptocurrency.
No Wiki – BSV
However, the token has its fair share of non-believers; Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales has recently expressed similar notions about the token.
Responding to a promotional BSV tweet by the team backing the CoinGeek London conference that noted his participation as a keynote speaker, Wales claimed that the coin “offers nothing for Wikipedia.” The February 7 tweet read:
“Until the emergence of Bitcoin SV (BSV) to reclaim Bitcoin’s original design, no blockchain had the scalability to power micropayments to efficiently reward better user information and handle the staggering amount of data Wikipedia carries.”
Wales dispelled the rumors of about him being a supporter of BSV, stating:
“Your marketing materials need to be updated immediately — as people seem to be reading this as some kind of endorsement from me. I’m coming to speak my mind, which includes that BSV offers nothing for Wikipedia and that there is zero chance we would ever use it.”
Wale’s response has been a major hit among all the community members that are not in favor of the highly controversial token. Many, however, questioned Wale’s motive behind accepting the invitation.
BSV developments
BSV recently went through a scheduled upgrade named Genesis on February 3, which resulted in a minor chain split where two versions of BSV exist at the time. Genesis changes many of the consensus rules for BSV to remove all remaining limitations. The fork was aimed at restoring the original Bitcoin protocol.
Prior to that, BSV surged more than 100 percent, starting 2020 with an all-time high of $458 and momentarily becoming the fourth-largest cryptocurrency by market cap overtaking Bitcoin Cash. The rally was largely attributed to the fake news that the Bitcoin SV advocate Craig Wright received the private keys to a wallet that supposedly contains millions of Bitcoins.