Brad Chillum
Bitcoin hit a new record high on Friday, coming close to $8000 barrier.
According to CoinDesk, bitcoin was trading at $7998 in the first hours of the morning.
Bitcoin was on a rollercoaster this week, falling to $5500 and then regaining 45% in a record time.
According to Coinmarketcap.com, bitcoin’s market capitalization is at the moment $133.5 bilion.
The price dip last weekend came after SegWit2x was canceled. The aim of the upgrade was to increase the transaction speeds of SegWit2x, which has increasingly slowed down over the years. If the upgrade took place, it would have caused what is known as a “hard fork,” causing a new bitcoin spin-off to be formed.
Two previous forks have already happened earlier this year, leading to the creation of bitcoin cash and bitcoin gold.
A big news came on Friday, when Coinbaise said there are still chances for a fork.
David Farmer ( director of communications at Coinbase) said that:
“small number of miners may attempt to go forward with a fork.”
If a fork happens, holders of bitcoin will receive the newly-created cryptocurrency called “bitcoin2x” for free, essentially giving them free money. That is why bitcoin was rising Friday.
Coinbase said that there are two scenarios. The first is that the new bitcoin2x network is unusable because there is not enough support, in which case Coinbase will not facilitate trading or withdrawals because “it will not be possible to move these assets.” Farmer said that this is the most likely outcome.
The second scenario is that the bitcoin2x network is usable because miner support is strong.
We will see in the next period how things will evolve, but one thing is clear, bitcoin will continue to gain capitalization.
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