Bitcoin has recorded some really big turns this year. It has grown in value by 500 percent. The cryptocurrency value saw some major decline last week, but regained its lost footing on Monday as its value recovered to over US $ 1,000.
Bitcoin Fluctuation Initiates Market Frenzy
All through the previous week, bitcoin value underwent many ups and downs. It even spiked to $8,000 at a point during the week but later dropped to $6,000 in the weekend.
The week saw the shares of the Canadian firm, Hive Blockchain Technologies increase by 3.690%, while Nvidia recorded a drop by over half of its revenue from the previous quarter.
Elsewhere, the week witnessed Bitcoin fall to $5,555 on Bitstamp, the Luxembourg exchange, which is a decline of about 30 percent from its record high on Wednesday of nearly $7,900. The recovery on Monday happened when traders began buying back into the cryptocurrency.
Monday saw bitcoin rebound to $6,718 with over 14 percent of trading being done on the cryptocurrency. However this is $1,000 less when compared to its record high in the previous week.
Segwit2x Influence
The sudden fall of bitcoin is triggered by the decision of Segwit2x supporters to abandon the software upgrade. The increase in bitcoin’s value to above $7,000 was mainly due to the anticipation of the split or fork in the cryptocurrency.
Mike Belshe, the key architect behind segwit2x has announced that the hard fork planned on November 16 this month will not happen. The decision came in the wake of withdrawal of support for hard fork by the NYA signatories. Bitfinex, the largest bitcoin exchange had also decided against using Bitgo as its core wallet.
Segwit2x, if it had progressed according to plan, would have increased the capacity of blockchain enabling faster transactions and lower transaction fees due to reduced competition in processing the payments.
However the suspension comes due to the consensus among the community to hold it together, which will not be possible if the hard fork occurred.
Bitcoin Cash Capitalizes On Bitcoin Slump
Market players who consider low fees crucial to bitcoin’s future have started selling bitcoin to buy into Bitcoin cash. Bitcoin cash originally spawned from Bitcoin in August this year has bigger block size and lower transaction fees.
As bitcoin fluctuated between all-time high and depressing lows, bitcoin cash nearly tripled from its original value over the week. It stood at $2,000 on November 12, which is a record high for the cryptocurrency.
The surge of bitcoin cash was to such an extent that it overtook Ethereum, which is the second biggest next only to bitcoin. Some market experts even started predicting that bitcoin cash would overtake bitcoin.
However Monday saw fresh buying of bitcoin, which caused bitcoin cash value to plummet. According to Coinmarketcap, the value of bitcoin cash declined to a $1,097 on Monday, which is 30 percent lower than its earlier high.
Andreas Antopolous, a bitcoin security expert, in his Twitter post has stated that both bitcoin and bitcoin cash can exist together in a similar way to how Ethereum and bitcoin have existed so far. He maintains that cryptocurrency need not be about a single entity, as it is not a game of zero sums.