Bitcoin Cash won't replace BTC
I supported Cash before it even forked, steemed that i would be calling it "Bitcoin". I'm going back on that now.
3 things pushing BCH price right now:
SegX2 fork dead means no reason to stock up on BTC and get the reward of 2 coins. People are selling BTC, buying other crypto's. BCH included. Prices up all over.
SegX2 fork dead also means there will be one less coin out there competing for the identity of "Bitcoin". BCH just lost a major potential competitor that never came to be.
Hype over prospect of BCH replacing BTC, but it won't. Not anytime soon anyways.
BTC has too large of a market overall. Its on too many exchanges. Its too great of a thing to overcome in a hurry. It would take time and incredible amounts of money to make a move on BTC. Ask ETH how easy it is to make a flippening happen. Eth has rich backers, fancy functions to tout and years of building markets.
Exchanges will never go back and change the identity of these chains either. The chain listed as BTC will remain listed as BTC. They have no incentive to switch them, both coins generate fees whatever they're called. Also they'd need to restart all their charts. They'd prob get sued. . .
For BCH to overtake BTC it thereby needs to be added to more exchanges and more pairs than BTC. It has taken years for BTC to get onto as many markets as it has. Again, not to say its impossible for BCH to have more listings than BTC, but it's not happening anytime soon.
From a purely philosophical standpoint, bitcoin has remained unchanged through 2017. There was threat that the network would muscle in a fork called segx2. A do or die fork. Upgrade your wallet, or its going to stop being usable (not that you lose your coins, just that they'd be locked until you upgrade). At the prospect of this aggressive fork, another group called BCH (Bitcoin Cash) decided to preemptively create their own fork and split away from the network before SegX2's fork happens. A minority group of miners then split away supporting BCH and we have Bitcoin Cash. BUT! As SegX2's do or die date approached, it became clear they didn't have consensus for their fork. It's widely opposed even. So SegX2 supporters abandoned it rather than force through their aggressive fork that didn't have everyone on board. So at this time Bitcoin hasn't actually changed at all. You can still run your old wallets and make transactions. Sure the vast majority of the network is running Segwit now, but it's a compatible version of segwit that can operate without necessitating a hard fork. Bitcoin soldiers on unchanged, some people have upgraded to segwit, but you don't need to.
And by all means set me straight if i'm wrong about legacy non-segwit 1mb being compatible from now on as well or any of my tech analysis anytime- Im no dev. But seriously...no more scary deadlines or threats legacy may be kicked away to try and survive correct? Segwit and Legacy can live happily together in BTC.
My determination to refer to BCH as "Bitcoin" was dependent on it being the only surviving non-segwit chain. It looked like the options were BCH or SegwitX2. . . In such a choice BCH to me seems more legitimately "Bitcoin". Changing block size (what BCH did) isn't as dramatic a change as forcing Segwit onto the whole network. Even on a minority split, BCH would be the stewards of the true bitcoin in my mind given those 2 options.
But bottom line if i can open my 2016 Bitcoin wallet and send and receive transactions on the blockchain the exchanges are referring to as "Bitcoin", BTC. Then i'd still call that chain the true Bitcoin.
Hey btw, I opened that wallet you made for me years ago. Didn't you put like a Satoshi or two worth of Bitcoin on there? I only ask because I gave a few Sats to a friend for his birthday, and was planning on just giving him what was in that wallet!