With Bitcoin Cash hash war on the verge of breaking out, bitcoin and the wider cryptocurrency market bleed on Thursday.

Bitcoin has nose dived below the psychological $6,000 mark, hitting a 13-month low, while Bitcoin Cash(BCH), a crypto at the center of turmoil, was down as much as 15 percent over the past 24 hours to reach $435, according to coinmarketcap.

Craig Wright Sent Bitcoin Price Down

Undoubtedly, the looming bitcoin cash fork is the chief culprit behind cryptocurrency sell off. Craig Wright(CSW), the self-proclaimed creator of Bitcoin, known as “Fake Satoshi” and an ardent proponent of BCH software implementation Bitcoin SV, has threatened to crash the price of the Bitcoin if miners switch to mine BCH in the impending fork.

He took to Twitter to alert BTC miners on November 15, saying that “ If you switch to mine BCH, we may need to fund this with BTC, if we do, we sell for USD and, well… we think BTC market has no room… it tanks. ” Can he really send the Bitcoin price down to $1000 as what he said?

Further, Wright vows to kill off the competing chain, Bitcoin ABC. According to a screenshot shared on WeChat, the country’s top social media messaging app, Wright claimed “ I will mine until ABC are dead and no matter how long it takes”.

Backlash from Bitcoin ABC Camp

Wright’s words have sparked backlash from a number of backers of Bitcoin ABC. ViaBTC, a large Chinese bitcoin mining pool, took to twitter yesterday to dismiss Wright with a harsh wording.

Vitalik Buterin, founder of Ethereum who has labeled Wright a “ fraud”, commented on this tweet that “The best time to oppose a tyrant or lunatic is one year ago. The second best time is today”.

As the Bitcoin Cash hard fork will take place in a few hours, the competition between 2 rival camps—supporters of Bitcoin ABC and Bitcoin SV—is heating up. Currently, according to Coin.Dance, a leading Bitcoin network data provider, 70 to 75 percent of miners are backing the SV network, compared to 14 to 26 percent for Bitcoin ABC over the past 24 hours.

Speculation is growing that the cryptocurrency mining giant Bitmain and other major mining pools which side with Bitcoin ABC will switch over the hashrate from Bitcoin to Bitcoin Cash to win the hash war. If so, Wright and his Bitcoin SV will possibly lose the game.

Notably, Bitmain’s Antpool which backs Bitcoin ABC released an announcement yesterday regarding their solution for BCH hard fork, saying “AntPool will continue to provide mining support for Bitcoin cash (BCH) during hard fork as normal. Since BitcoinSV will not be compatible with Bitcoin Cash (BCH) and no replay protection is added, AntPool will take protection measures for Bitcoin cash (BCH) in order to protect the users’ interests in the transaction after hard fork”.

At the time of writing, trading preference is still tilting toward Bitcoin ABC, although Bitcoin SV price increased sharply over the past 24 hours. According to data from pre-fork trading on Poloniex, Bitcoin ABC token (BCHABC) token is trading at about $251 (priced in the USDC stablecoin), only slightly higher than the price of Bitcoin SV(BCHSV), which is trading at $169.

Cryptocurrency investors and speculators should remain on alert for higher volatility of the new forked coins and a more chaotic crypto market after the software upgrade. If you have little knowledge of what a ‘hard fork’ is,please do not jump into that pool right now.