Sending BCH tokens to SegWit Bitcoin addresses was a big problem from the start. Over the years, more than 18,000 coins have been lost. BCash blockchain does not support SegWit and both cryptocurrencies had the same address format for over a year. Thus, a normal wallet could not distinguish between the correct or incorrect BCH address.
Mining pools have already managed to recover a large part of the lost coins through their rescue programs. Most pools cooperate with users and for a relatively large fee they are willing to insert a special type of transaction into the mined blocks to allow access. Unfortunately, one miner opted for another approach. Coiny steals to himself.
Yesterday, this unknown entity has managed a real jackpot. 9,000 BCH tokens were released from their SegWit prison and moved to the address of this mysterious miner. James Loppi reported on his Twitter:
An unknown miner has swept up nearly 9,000 BCH that were mistakenly sent to SegWit addresses (which are only redeemable on Bitcoin.) Over $3M as of today. H/T @khannib @coinometrics https://t.co/wrBGhYOa3o pic.twitter.com/Xug5e6fLq1
— Jameson Lopp (@lopp) February 25, 2020
Coinmetrics has been monitoring the situation with stuck BCH from the very beginning. All large pools work together to return them to their rightful owners. The unknown miner, however, clearly wins after yesterday’s catch.
51% attack on stolen coins
we still have one point of interest. A similar situation has occurred in the past. At that time, however, the two largest mining pools – BTC.com and BTC.top – joined together to form a 51% attack on the BCH network to stop the promotion of the block that sent the lost BCH to an unknown address.
Summary
That’s all to decentralize of Bitcoin Cash …
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