Bitcoin hard fork BLAKE2b launched September 1, miners and exchanges ignored it

Luke Dashjr's Bitcoin hard fork BLAKE2b went live on September 1 with minimal hashrate and little community engagement. The new chain, which swaps Bitcoin's mining algorithm from SHA-256 to BLAKE2b, aims to allow ordinary computers to mine but has been largely disregarded by miners and exchanges. Dashjr's proposal, BIP-110, seeks to remove non-financial data from Bitcoin blocks, but the main network has been labeled 'Spamcoin' by his supporters. An earlier attempt at a BIP-110 chain failed after just two blocks in August. The algorithm change has alienated Dashjr from the existing hardware ecosystem, leading to a drop in computing power immediately after launch. Blockstream CEO Adam Back summarized the situation succinctly, stating, 'Live by the fork, die by the fork.' Despite Dashjr's claims that the BTC ticker now belongs to BLAKE2b, chain data contradicts this assertion. The original Bitcoin network continued to produce blocks without interruption, with BTC trading around 76942 dollars, down approximately 1.33% in 24 hours. No major exchanges have listed BLAKE2b, although a small beta platform has opened deposits under the ticker BTCB2, where bids reached 82 dollars, significantly lower than BTC.

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