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Today was the day when Bitcoin price went absolutely berserk. The cryptocurrency didn’t want to slow down at all. It kept breaking all-time highs one after the other until it peaked at $5856. In the past two days, Bitcoin rallied from $4500 to $5856. Let that sink in.
As mentioned in the previous newsletter, there are three major factors that are behind this surge: rise in demand for Bitcoin from institutional investors, strengthening of the Japanese and South Korean markets, and the upcoming SegWit2x hard fork.
Blockstream executive Samson Mow earlier said that the upcoming SegWit2x hard fork in November could play a vital role in the short-term price trend of Bitcoin. Throughout this week we saw a number of communities companies, and miners including the South Korean Bitcoin community and F2Pool have publicly denounced the SegWit2x hard fork.
Notably, F2Pool, one of the member companies behind the NYA Agreement and the SegWit2x proposal, is not signalling for SegWit2x anymore.
Another catalyst that may have began this rally on Thursday, was the speculation that China could reverse a recent ban it put on exchanges.
Surprisingly, back in July when Bitcoin was leading up to its first hard fork on Aug 1st, the prices were in a corrective phase till about 15 days prior to the D-day. This time, however, the story is different, the prices have been in a consistent uptrend since bottoming out on Sept. 15.
Unlike last time, traders and investors seem to be buying more and more Bitcoins prior to fork, so that they can benefit from the new coins. At the time of writing Bitcoin is trading at $5779, posting a market cap of $96 billion and dominating the entire cryptocurrency market by 55%.
Let’s not forget this is Bitcoin in all this excitement. It can anytime pull the volatility card and fall back to $5000 level in no time. Nevertheless, for traders who want to hold on to their long-term positions the next resistance level is at $6197.
It’s a great day for Bitcoin. The crypto community is celebrating it with this gif and so should you.
Top Stories from the Crypto World
1. “Cryptocurrencies will bring massive disruptions”, warns Lagarde
Christine Lagarde, head of International Monetary Fund (IMF) has stated that central banks and banking providers should start taking cryptocurrencies seriously.
This isn’t the first time Lagarde is warning banks regarding the potential of cryptocurrencies. She has praised cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology in the past. Recently, she also stated that IMF might be issuing a worldwide digital currency in the near future.
2. China looking to issue centralized state-owned cryptocurrency
Yao Qian, the Director of the Digital Currency Research Institute under the People’s Bank of China, talked about the potential of a state-owned digital currency. He also suggested that there is an inherent lack of value in public cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin.
“The value of cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin primarily comes from the market speculation. It will be a disaster to recognize it as a real currency. And the lack of a value anchoring inherently determines that bitcoin can never be a real one.” Yao added.
3. Ethereum Byzantium fork delays
Ethereum’s next big upgrade might not be coming out anytime soon. The parity client is yet to release software that includes the protocol changes needed for the shift.
It is important to understand that in order for a successful hard fork to occur on Ethereum, all nodes must update their software with a release that contains the block number as well as any agreed protocols.
When the block number is reached, these upgrades are automatically triggered across the network – unless there’s a problem with the software.
According to Ether Nodes, 17% of Parity clients are running faulty Byzantium software, while 80% have yet to upgrade at all. Let’s see how it takes the team release the next update.