Earlier today, on October 22, the bitcoin price declined from $6,150 to $5,880, recording a minor correction after achieving a new all-time high at $6,199.
Since October 12, the price of bitcoin has surged from $4,800 to $6,199, within a span of 10 days. Investors have expressed their concerns in regards to such an abrupt increase in the value of bitcoin without major corrections.
Over the past 24 hours, the price of bitcoin has recorded a slight correction, as it fell by $270. But, the market has started to recover and various short-term momentum indicators such as moving average convergence divergence (MACD) demonstrate that another bitcoin rally is imminent.
Analysts have also suggested the possibility of the price of bitcoin entering the $10,000 region if the $7,000 mark could be achieved in the next few days, in consideration of bitcoin’s strong rally in the past week.
Upcoming November SegWit2x Hard Fork, Adoption of Bitcoin Gold (BCG)
Most major exchanges including Coinbase, Bitfinex, and Bittrex have announced their plans to allow their clients to withdraw Bitcoin Gold upon its release in mid-November. Unlike the Bitcoin Cash hard fork in August, Charlie Lee, the creator of Litecoin and former executive at Coinbase, emphasized that the failure of large-scale trading platforms to provide immediate support for Bitcoin Gold could lead to class action lawsuits. Hence, Lee noted that it is likely most exchanges will likely support BCG by November.
“Because this 2x hardfork is so contentious, Coinbase cannot handle it the same way they handled the ETC and BCH hardfork. In other words, they can’t just choose one fork and ignore the other fork. Choosing to support only one fork (whichever that is) would cause a lot of confusion for users and open them up to lawsuits. So Coinbase is forced to support both forks at the time of the hardfork and need to let the market decide which is the real Bitcoin,” said Lee.
But, exchanges do have the freedom to either delay the integration of BCG trading or simply not implement Bitcoin Gold onto their trading platforms. Earlier this week, Bittrex, the third largest cryptocurrency exchange by user base and trading volume behind Bithumb and Bitfinex, revealed that it will not provide Bitcoin Gold trading.
It is likely that the community and industry’s decline in support for SegWit2x and Bitcoin Gold could lead to an increase in demand for Bitcoin, as the market gains confidence in Bitcoin’s mid-term performance.
In the short-term, investors should focus on the development of SegWit2x or Bitcoin Gold hard fork, emergence of bitcoin derivatives and options trading platforms in the US such as LedgerX, and the increase in adoption rate of bitcoin in major markets like Japan, because these three factors could trigger the interests of institutional and retail traders.
Already, LedgerX, the first government-approved bitcoin derivatives and options trading platform or clearing house in the US, has processed $1 million in trades in its first week of operations. As Ledgerx stated:
“As a new exchange and clearing house with technology built entirely from scratch, we were hoping for a quiet first week with minimal volumes to test the pipes. We ended up completing swaps and options trades worth over $1,000,000 USD. Crucially, these trades were cleared through LedgerX, which is the only institutional grade, US federally regulated exchange and clearing house for digital currencies. And we are literally just getting started.”