The Bitcoin bulls are back this time pushing the price over $200 to a high of $2783. Unfortunately for Ethereum, the price diverged and actually dropped 3% at the time of writing. Ethereum has been following Bitcoin’s price patterns for the past week, but it looks like a correction ensued and shifted the tide.
Recent news of SegWig2x consensus surpassing 80% is undoubtedly the catalyst for the recent Bitcoin price rise. With BTCC finally signalling SegWit in the past 12 hours, the scaling is near. Bitcoiners uniting is a rare sight, but it shows the the cryptocurrency is capable of evolving and progressing.
As discussed in our comparison between the Hong Kong and the New York agreement, Segwit2x is being planned to activate before July 31st. If everything goes according to plan, Bitcoin will double its blocksize and increase each block’s capacity. This will allow the cryptocurrency to accommodate more users with less mempool backlogs and lower transaction fees.
On another note, Ethereum has seemingly diverged from Bitcoin’s price. Up until a few days ago btc and ether’s markets followed each others’ ups and downs. Howeverk today we have seen significant divergence in price as Ethereum dipped 3% while Bitcoin increased by 9%.
One potential explanation for the peculiar market action is the recent Status.im ICO. Today the Status team raised over $270 million in 3 hours. However, due to the astonishing demand and some technical difficulties, many investors were unable to contribute to the ICO. Since traders are constantly looking for opportunities to make money, it seems that many decided to sell their ETH and take a long BTC position.
Only a few day earlier the SONM ICO sold over $47 million in roughly 4 days. That ICO was successful in the sense that investors were able to participate and even though the network was backlogged, it didn’t come to a complete halt.
By leaving so many disgrunted investors, many are simply saying “screw ethereum, I am switching to bitcoin.”
“Why on earth would they make us think we could get in on their project.. I turned my bitcoins to eth on thurs eve (at a loss) prepping for saturday, found out the ICO was pushed ’till today that morning I woke early, entered the ICO early because the block time until block 390300 was stated as 0 on their website. Wasted over $100 in gas because we REALLY weren’t invited to the party. Not very satisfied about this.” –jredhed
While we may experience some turbulence in the short term, both Bitcoin and Ethereum will prevail in the end. As the ecosystem adapts to handling an influx of traffic during critical times, and as Bitcoin’s block size debate resolves in the coming months, cryptocurrency will see yet another wave and reach new heights.
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