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 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 HoursBIP-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 as a non-event.The pattern repeats. An earlier BIP-110 chain 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.Adam Back Delivers the PunchlineBack needed seven words to sum up the result. Live by the fork, die by the fork. Adam Back, CEO of Blockstream, posted on X.Dashjr, however, still frames the minority chain as the genuine article. On X he claims the BTC ticker has belonged to Bitcoin for over a decade, and that Bitcoin has now moved to BLAKE2b. Chain data contradicts him.Bitcoin Knots, the node software Dashjr maintains, pushed similar arguments in August. David Schwartz, Ripple’s former chief technology officer, called them nonsense at the time.Traders barely reacted. The original network produced blocks without interruption. BTC changed hands near $76,942, down roughly 1.33% in 24 hours.No major exchange has listed the coin. One small beta platform opened deposits under the ticker BTCB2, since no official symbol exists yet.BTCB2 bids there topped out at $82, roughly 900 times below BTC, while the lowest ask sat at $190. That 131.7% spread signals almost no real trading.A chain without miners, listings, or bids still needs buyers who value its blocks.