A Bitcoin Hard Fork Went Live September 1. Miners, Exchanges, and Traders Ignored It

Luke Dashjr's Bitcoin hard fork went live on September 1, and it arrived almost empty. The new BLAKE2b chain drew little hashrate, while Blockstream CEO Adam Back reduced the whole episode to one line.

Dashjr broke away from Bitcoin (BTC) by swapping its mining algorithm, a change meant to let ordinary computers mine again. Miners and exchanges largely ignored him.

Why the Bitcoin Hard Fork Collapsed Within Hours

BIP-110 is Dashjr's proposal to strip non-financial data out of Bitcoin blocks. His camp calls the main network "Spamcoin." Meanwhile, most of the community treated the September 1 chain split as a non-event.

The pattern repeats. An earlier BIP-110 chain died after two blocks in August. Mining pool OCEAN then faced calls to replace its leadership after routing customer hashrate to that chain without clear consent.

The algorithm swap also cut Dashjr off from the industry's hardware base. BLAKE2b replaces SHA-256, so the specialized rigs that secure Bitcoin cannot touch the new chain. Computing power on the fork fell right after launch.

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