General Daily Trends
Bitcoin
Bitcoin experienced significant devaluation today, dropping in price almost $670 ,from $7,574 to slightly above $6,900 at the time of this writing, the lowest it’s been since November 2nd. This dip comes less than a day after Bitcoin reached it’s newest all time high of $7,617. Such a drop has broken Bitcoin’s 6 day streak of continuous growth. The market cap of Bitcoin has dropped over $10 billion, severely effecting the overall cryptocurrency market cap, causing a drop of over $5 billion.
Many blame the upcoming SegWit2x fork for Bitcoin’s most recent drop, as investors are moving their funds to other altcoins in order to avoid the heavy risk and uncertainty that the fork will bring.
The short term future of Bitcoin is extremely difficult to predict, because of the fork, expected to happen in 10 days, on November 16th. One option is that confident supporters of either BTC1x or BTC2x will buy up more of the currency as the day grows closer. Another option is that the current trend continues, with investors growing continually more worried about the contoversial fork, which would lead to Bitcoin’s price continuing to fall, and other altcoins seeing a spike in growth.
Bitcoin Cash
Bitcoin Cash’s price has remained suprisingly constant throughout the day. Overall, there was a small decline in price (about 2% at time of writing), but the drop not very significant. It is likely that in the coming week, as the fork approaches, Bitcoin Cash will see large growth as users flock to a safe place for their funds. The market cap also saw a small drop.
As said before, Bitcoin Cash has become a likely place for users to either temporarily or perminantly store their funds as the Bitcoin Core community continues to undergo dangerous forks, that put both the 1x and 2x chains at risk.
Etherium
The value of Etherium increased about 1% today, still having significant difficulty consistantly breaking the $300 barrier. Etherium has remained incredibly stable over the last week, fluctuating only $25 from the low point to the high for the week.
As the fork approaches, Etherium, like Bitcoin Cash, may well become a place for users to store funds during the controversy. It is unlikely, however, that Etherium experiences long term growth after the dust from the fork settles.
Major Events/Miscellanious
SegWit2x Fork
The largest piece of news in the cryptocurrency world as of now is still the SegWit2x Fork, something that has heavily divided miners from users. Still, only 10 days before the fork, a large majority of miners are signaling their support for SegWit2x. A vast majority of users, however, continue to support the Bitcoin Core (1x) chain.
It is impossible to determine exactly what the result of the fork will be. From personal research, I believe that both Bitcoin 1x and Bitcoin 2x will take some serious hits up to a week after the fork takes place. If miners go through with their promise, and move to mining the SegWit2x chain, Bitcoin Core would lose almost 85% of its hash power, leading to insanely long wait times and fees. Many users will likely stick with the 1x chain, even as it begins to fail. Miners would have to stay incredibly strong, potentially losing large amounts of profit in order to force users on the 1x chain to move over. If miners fail to mine the SegWit2x chain, or succumb to resistance from users, the 2x chain will quickly become irrelevant. Since both chains still require a large hashrate in order to stay alive, miners being split on the issue and refusing to compromise could lead to gradual destruction of both chains.
The most likely option is that a large amount of miners move to mine the SegWit2x chain, but most move back within days after user resistance remains strong. In this situation, both 1x and 2x transactions will slow, and fees will rise. This could lead to heavy devaluation of Bitcoin. As miners return to the 1x chain, hashrate will return to normal, and transaction fees, while still high, will return to what they are before.
This is not the last large and dangerous scaling controversy we will see. Scaling is becoming the single greatest challenge for the Bitcoin Core change, and is something that users and miners are finding it difficult to come to a consensus on. I will discuss this in far more detail later on.
Rumors of Amazon Accepting Bitcoin
These rumors are still just that. Rumors. Some sources claim that the technology giant will begin accepting Bitcoin as early as October. While this is unlikely, the implications that this would have would be massive. The two largest factors holding Bitcoin back are scaling issues, and lack of real world use (outside of early adapting businesses, such as Dell). If Amazon, the largest online retailer in the world, began accepting Bitcoin, the sky’s the limit. It would bring Bitcoin to the mainstream, and would skyrocket not only the value of Bitcoin, but how commonly it is used to make legitimate transactions.
Again, I must emphasize- these are rumors. And while it is fun to speculate about, it is highly unlikely this happens anytime in the near future.
Electronium Hack
For those unaware, a popular British ICO has been hit by a DDoS cyberattack, locking investors out of their accounts for multiple days. I personally have not bought Electronium, but the organization claims to allow people to mine the currency from their smartphones, something that (I believe) no other cryptocurrency has yet attempted to do. The story is still developing, but the group, which raised over $40 million, assures users they are working dilligently to solve the problems.
Further Reading
https://www.coinspeaker.com/2017/09/25/rumors-amazon-may-accept-bitcoin-october/
Final Note
First of all, thank you for reading!
I run solely off of your generous upvotes, and donations. It takes 2 seconds to drop an upvote, which directly helps me continue to write consistantly. If you wish to take it a step further, feel free to donate to me directly through Bitcoin. Any amount is greatly appreciated!
(1AWvxxKsQBJUtarpD1GdFt3KX1LRdWUWja)