Bitcoin prices surged this week as an overwhelming majority of miners, the computer operators who maintain its network, backed a software upgrade that will boost the speed of processing transactions, likely averting a split that could have resulted in multiple versions of the digital currency. Through an online voting mechanism, miners representing 99% of the cryptocurrency’s computing power, backed a new piece of software, known as Segregated Witness, or SegWit, that would boost bitcoin’s processing power without altering the underlying software
The debate leading up to the vote marked a split that largely pitted miners and entrepreneurs, who wanted to increase block size and maximize bitcoin’s value as a payments network, versus developers who fear larger block sizes will increase operating costs for miners, driving some out and leading to more centralized control