November Bitcoin Fork expectations are split into two key versions: Some expect another Bitcoin fork to take place, while others don't believe this scenario. But, in reality, is November Bitcoin fork possible? Let's find out.
AtoZForex - The long-anticipated moment of truth for Bitcoin came to pass on August 1. That time, the ViaBTC mining pool completed a fork that split Bitcoin Cash from the legacy Bitcoin network. This fork may not be the only one of its kind. The growing disagreements between opposing camps signaled that another fork may happen before the end of 2017.
1 August Bitcoin Protocol Split
The last fork split Bitcoin users into two groups:
- Those who approved of a proposal to increase the block size on the blockchain ledger from 1 megabyte to 8 megabytes;
- Those who did not.
Users who did not approve of the proposal continued to use the old Bitcoin network. This meant that problems created by the 1-megabyte limit persisted for them.
This limit, which translates to about 100 million transactions per year, slowed down the growth of Bitcoin in 2017. The higher demand for the cryptocurrency hit that invisible wall. The result was considerably higher transaction fees and bigger transaction confirmation delays.
A proposal that first appeared in May aims to tackle this limit in a different manner than Bitcoin Cash is SegWit2x. It has been led by Bloq co-founder Jeff Garzik. SegWit2x would add a code optimization known as Segregated Witness to the Bitcoin network. It would also be increasing the block size to 2 megabytes, three months after SegWit is activated.
58 firms representing about 84% of the total hashing power of the Bitcoin network originally supported the proposal. This includes SegWit developer Bitcoin Core after initial rejection for increasing block size.
November Bitcoin Fork expectations: Launch of Third Bitcoin Version?
After SegWit was activated, the SegWit2x team announced that the bigger block size will take effect sometime in November. Unless 92% consensus is reached between Bitcoin miners, another hard fork will happen. This would create yet another version of Bitcoin.
However, reaching this consensus is appearing increasingly unlikely as more miners back away from the proposal ahead of its activation. A number of major developers from Bitcoin Core believe that the probability of the second fork in November is nearing.
What will happen if another fork will take place?
A third Bitcoin network will spread capital thinner and will probably introduce more volatility to the two already volatile cryptocurrencies. However, another fork may not be all bad news since the split in August resulted in a price rally for both Bitcoin and Bitcoin Cash after initial losses.
The second fork will also allow more scalability solutions to compete in the real world arena. This should be a healthy change from the lengthy intellectual debates that slowed the progress of Bitcoin development with political gridlocks.
The final outcome will be a market where investors can choose the network that carries their transactions, and just like any free market economy, the best will survive.
About author
This article "November Bitcoin Fork expectations" was written by Yahia Barakah. Yahia is driven by a passion for decoding markets to make them accessible to all traders regardless of their experiences.
He has a broad experience in most major asset classes that fuses with his market analysis to provide coherent insights.