Bitcoin Unlimited shot up over 17 percent in 24 hours upon new revelations hounding anti-SegWit mining firm Bitmain.
Bitcoin entrepreneur Tuur Demeester highlighted the correlation in a post on Wednesday, as it emerged Bitmain’s hardware contained a “backdoor” allowing the remote shutdown of user products at will.
Demeester added the price uptick was due to a “higher likelihood of a chain split.”
The latest furor broke out after the emergence of a dedicated website, Antbleed, detailing the discovery and implications of the feature in Bitmain’s Antminers.
“At worst, this firmware backdoor allows Bitmain to shut off a large section of the global hashrate (estimated to be at up to 70% of all mining equipment),” site content states.
“...Even without Bitmain being malicious, the API is unauthenticated and would allow any MITM, DNS or domain hijack to shutdown Antminers globally.”
Pro-Bitcoin Core commentators such as former BTCC COO Samson Mow were quick to respond to the news, which is the second to involve Bitmain in recent weeks.
Earlier in April, another scheme was unearthed which allowed the company to exploit a loophole in Bitcoin’s code to economize on mining costs, something it stated had never occurred outside the testnet.
"The Bitcoin Unlimited token, meanwhile, had been on a downward slide since its debut as a futures trading pair on several exchanges in March."