Earlier today, on October 24, the bitcoin price dipped below $5,800 for the first time since October 19, due to the market’s decline in support for the upcoming Bitcoin Gold hard fork.
Meanwhile, the price of Ether, the native cryptocurrency of Ethereum, has recovered beyond the $300 mark, as previously suggested by CCN. WIth optimism surrounding the recent Byzantium hard fork and the Enterprise Ethereum Alliance (EEA), Ether has sustained its upward trend in the short-term.
“In the mid-term, the success of the Byzantium hard fork and rapid adoption of the Ethereum network will allow Ether to rebound and recover in value.”
Bitcoin Price is Struggling, is Bitcoin Gold a Major Factor?
Prominent and highly regarded bitcoin analysts and investors including Tuur Demeester and Spencer Bogart have emphasized that the upcoming Bitcoin Gold hard fork has caused the price of bitcoin to remain below the $6,000 mark, as traders move their funds from other alternative cryptocurrencies (altcoins) and digital assets.
Bogart, the head of research at Blockchain Capital, stated:
I see you traders: On the chart the coins in the green are the ones that people rotated into when they moved out of BTC following Gold fork pic.twitter.com/jMAHgFSWBA
Bitcoin holders prior to the Bitcoin Gold hard fork that is expected to occur in late November will be credited with BCG in 1:1 ratio by most exchanges and wallets such as Trezor and Bittrex. But, the Bitcoin Gold has to implement strong replay protection to ensure bitcoin holders can receive Bitcoin Gold safely. Without replay protection, as the Trezor development team noted, the process of retrieving Bitcoin Gold could endanger existing bitcoins
“Bitcoin Gold’s codebase is, at the moment of the writing, incomplete. Most importantly, it lacks replay protection. For this reason, TREZOR Wallet will not support Bitcoin Gold yet, as it would endanger your bitcoins. Replay protection prevents a transaction on the Bitcoin Gold chain from being re-transmitted on the Bitcoin chain and vice versa,” explained the Trezor development team.
Consequently, many users, traders, and investors opted to distribute their funds across many altcoins and digital assets, to prevent being affected by the Bitcoin Gold hard fork.
Demeester also stated that traders should expect a similar trend in mid-November, when the SegWit2x hard fork is expected to occur. He explained, “I expect a similar effect post the B2X fork November 16: ‘pent up bitcoins’ being redistributed into alts (e.g. LTC).”
Ethereum has struggled to rebound in the past week, and has always dipped below the $290 mark. Today, the price of Ether soared to $311, demonstrating upward momentum for the first time since late September.
Prior to the imposition of a nationwide ban on cryptocurrency trading and initial coin offerings (ICOs) by the Chinese government, the price of Ether neared the $400 region. Recently, the market has gained confidence over the mid-term growth of Ether, given that Ethereum has executed its Byzantium hard fork, second-layer solutions like Plasma are expected to be integrated, and decentralized applications are seeing commercial success.
In the upcoming weeks, it is likely that the Ether price could eye $350 as short-term target, as analysts suggest. Apart from ICOs, which have not seem much progress over the past few months, innovative decentralized applications such as EtherDelta have started to account for a large portion of Ethereum’s transactions, which can be considered as a positive indicator for Ethereum’s mid-term future.
