this is a different situation, where an out of band entity can selectively shut off a significant fraction of hashpower, and unlike the weedy obscurity of an architectural spat between largely unknown (by the mainstream) such a move would (indeed, will) make major waves in mainstream Joe Pension Fund/ Number Go Up news, who will not be familiar with nor interested in the technical arguments for the fork that is being actively suppressed. there's no weeks-long debate window here.

the stakes are very different now than in the Jihan boogeyman days, you can't handwave away this critical risk to stability or spin it as technical trivia of no concern to non-specialists.

Source for this? I searched around and the target was 80%. https://www.weusecoins.com/what-is-segwit2x/

> such a move would (indeed, will) make major waves in mainstream Joe Pension Fund/ Number Go Up news, who will not be familiar with nor interested in the technical arguments for the fork that is being actively suppressed. there's no weeks-long debate window here.

Fair point, given how the markets reacted to this drop in hashrate.

What makes you think the market reacted to the drop in hash rate? A 20% move is pretty typical in crypto. IMO this is more likely due to Bitcoin not having moved in price in almost 2 months (it's below its 2/18 price now, by a lot). People moved their get-rich-quick energy over to Doge. And once that sputtered out, they tried to cash out.

Tether by the way, had its two biggest outflow days ever on Thursday and Friday (200 and 300M respectively via the Kraken USDT:USD pair). If Tether is actually just backed by crypto and hope as we suspect, they'd have had to sell crypto to refill their depleted cash reserves. To be clear this is pure speculation.

Another possibility is the market is reacting to all the Coinbase executives dumping massive quantities of equity on retail bag holders, signaling a potential top.

Since all cryptos are dumping, primary and alt, it's probably a more systemic issue.