Earlier today, on October 13, the Bitcoin price achieved a new all-time high for the third time in the past two days, briefly surging to $5,920.
Possibility For Another Rally, Analysts Look Toward $6,000
Analysts including long-time Bitcoin investor Tuur Demeester, Trace Mayer, and Samson Mow are looking ahead toward $6,000, expecting yet another strong rally from Bitcoin to emerge in the next few days.
In a previous article, CCN revealed three major factors behind the recent surge in the price of Bitcoin: rise in demand for Bitcoin from institutional investors, strengthening of the Japanese and South Korean markets, and the upcoming SegWit2x hard fork. The article delved into the role of institutional and retail traders in the mid-term surge in the Bitcoin price, but as Blockstream executive Samson Mow noted, the upcoming SegWit2x hard fork in November could play a vital role in the short-term price trend of Bitcoin.
Throughout this week, an increasing number of communities, companies, and miners including the South Korean Bitcoin community and F2Pool have publicly denounced the SegWit2x hard fork, expressing their concerns toward the fork.
As BitGo lead engineer Jameson Lopp noted, F2Pool, one of the member companies behind the NYA Agreement and the SegWit2x proposal, stopped signaling for SegWit2x.
F2Pool stops signaling SegWit2X support. 15% down, 85% to go… https://t.co/iEjKn1gCgH pic.twitter.com/CU99EnnZ3j
— Jameson Lopp (
@lopp) October 12, 2017
While the majority of leading cryptocurrency exchanges and Bitcoin platforms such as Coinbase and Bitfinex have clarified that they will not list SegWit2x has the majority chain based on hashrate, several companies such as Xapo and Blockchain have revealed their intent to list the original Bitcoin blockchain as BC1 if it has less hashrate in comparison to the SegWit2x chain, despite the backlash and criticism from the community.
“There is a significant possibility that the planned hard fork will result in two bitcoin block chains. In this case, we will follow the chain with the most accumulated difficulty and refer to that chain as Bitcoin. If the minority chain has significant value we will make that value available for customers to hold or exchange for a period of time, as we did with Bitcoin Cash. If the minority chain is the one with 1MB blocks, we plan to call it BC1. If the minority chain has 2MB blocks, we plan to call it BC2,” stated the Blockchain development team.
Experts including Bitcoin investor and Atlanta Digital Currency Fund partner Alistair Milne have previously explained the flawed system of using hashrate as the sole indicator to justify the majority chain, as miners tend to follow profitable chains. For instance, upon the debut of Bitcoin Cash, most of the hashrate from Bitcoin migrated to Bitcoin Cash for a brief period of time before its difficulty adjustment. But, after the adjustment occurred, miners moved back to Bitcoin, as Bitcoin Cash was no longer as profitable as the original Bitcoin blockchain.
Communities and Miner Speak Out Against SegWit2x, Major Factor For Short-Term Price Increase
Because of these issues, miners such as F2Pool and communities like the South Korean Bitcoin community have rejected the SegWit2x hard fork in November. The South Korean Bitcoin community released an official statement which read:
“We, the Seoul Bitcoin Meetup, the largest bitcoin community in South Korea, founded in 2014 with more than 1600 members, would like to voice our staunch opposition to this November’s proposed hardfork. We are confident that BTC, the legacy chain, will not only survive this fork, but continue to flourish as the dominant Bitcoin network.”
The market’s confidence in the original Bitcoin blockchain and its long-term growth would likely position it for another strong rally, and a more stable platform to build upward momentum with the recent minor correction. More importantly, even if the SegWit2x hard fork occurs in November as planned, both supporters and critics of the hard fork would invest in Bitcoin to either express their support towards Bitcoin or to obtain the newly created SegWit2x coins (B2X) in October.