The news that a software upgrade was slated to go ahead in hours saw the bitcoin hitting an all-time high just below $8,000 (£6,060) on Friday. The software in question was suspended which resulted in the cryptocurrency strongly going down at the end of last week.
A statement was published on the website of Coinbase which is the world’s largest bitcoin company and has operations in 32 countries that stated that the software upgrade could again split or “fork” bitcoin into two versions would go ahead and this sent the bitcoin surge ahead breaking records.
“The Bitcoin Segwit2x fork is expected to occur in the next six hours,” it said in a statement published at 1004 GMT.
The new spin off would effectively make the existing owners of bitcoin owners of the new currency in the eventuality that a “fork” or a split in the bitcoin takes place.
It has been a roller coaster ride for bitcoin which fell sharply after talks and news of plans for Segwit2x were suspended at the end of the last week and soon after the cryptocurrency was seen also bouncing back by over 40 percent since Sunday.
By 1115 GMT, bitcoin settled to trade at $7,863 following the cryptocurrency reaching a high point of $7,997 in early Asian trading on the Luxembourg-based Bitstamp exchange.
The bitcoin was being driven higher by the speculation and talks about the fork, says market-watchers. If the split went off as is being expected by the market, owners of the new cryptocurrency would have the opportunity to sell out the spin-off coins at a profit in the eventuality that the market managed to assign a value to the new currency.
But because of the fact that there was lack of necessary support for the network to split the cryptocurrency, it was mostly expected that the fork that was to successfully divide bitcoin in two currencies would not happen, according to a post that was published on the Medium blogging platform by the communications director of the company - David Farmer.
“Whenever people hear ‘fork’ nowadays the price jumps, as people hope to get the free dividend,” said Charles Hayter, founder of cryptocurrency data analysis site Cryptocompare.
“There is also a resulting spike in demand for people entering bitcoin” from other cryptocurrencies.
All of the funds that had been stored in Coinbase wallets were safely kept and the company was keeping a close watch and monitoring the situation, Farmer said. The fork is expected to take place between 1400 and 1600 GMT and suspension of buying and selling of all bitcoin on Coinbase was to be done in the hour just before the fork.
This week is expected to be the best week for Bitcoin since July. There has been a rise of more than 700 percent for the digital coin this year.
(Sourcec:www.reutrs.com)
A statement was published on the website of Coinbase which is the world’s largest bitcoin company and has operations in 32 countries that stated that the software upgrade could again split or “fork” bitcoin into two versions would go ahead and this sent the bitcoin surge ahead breaking records.
“The Bitcoin Segwit2x fork is expected to occur in the next six hours,” it said in a statement published at 1004 GMT.
The new spin off would effectively make the existing owners of bitcoin owners of the new currency in the eventuality that a “fork” or a split in the bitcoin takes place.
It has been a roller coaster ride for bitcoin which fell sharply after talks and news of plans for Segwit2x were suspended at the end of the last week and soon after the cryptocurrency was seen also bouncing back by over 40 percent since Sunday.
By 1115 GMT, bitcoin settled to trade at $7,863 following the cryptocurrency reaching a high point of $7,997 in early Asian trading on the Luxembourg-based Bitstamp exchange.
The bitcoin was being driven higher by the speculation and talks about the fork, says market-watchers. If the split went off as is being expected by the market, owners of the new cryptocurrency would have the opportunity to sell out the spin-off coins at a profit in the eventuality that the market managed to assign a value to the new currency.
But because of the fact that there was lack of necessary support for the network to split the cryptocurrency, it was mostly expected that the fork that was to successfully divide bitcoin in two currencies would not happen, according to a post that was published on the Medium blogging platform by the communications director of the company - David Farmer.
“Whenever people hear ‘fork’ nowadays the price jumps, as people hope to get the free dividend,” said Charles Hayter, founder of cryptocurrency data analysis site Cryptocompare.
“There is also a resulting spike in demand for people entering bitcoin” from other cryptocurrencies.
All of the funds that had been stored in Coinbase wallets were safely kept and the company was keeping a close watch and monitoring the situation, Farmer said. The fork is expected to take place between 1400 and 1600 GMT and suspension of buying and selling of all bitcoin on Coinbase was to be done in the hour just before the fork.
This week is expected to be the best week for Bitcoin since July. There has been a rise of more than 700 percent for the digital coin this year.
(Sourcec:www.reutrs.com)