It seems like the canceled Bitcoin fork might have been a disaster if they had executed it.
I was fully expecting Nov 16th to be an apocalypse for Bitcoin. Over 80% of miners were signaling support for 2MB blocks, and several hundred of the largest Bitcoin exchanges and companies had signed an agreement to support the block size increase. Despite businesses planning for 2MB blocks, much of the Bitcoin user community and core development team was prepared to reject the software change, which would split the Bitcoin network in a most disruptive way.
The split would have been a disaster for Bitcoin. However, the price of Bitcoin has been reaching new all-time-highs because uninformed investors have been conditioned to think that a fork in Bitcoin means that you get free coins. That was the case with Bitcoin Cash, but the chain split planned for Nov 16th would have been very different.
Under the SegWit2x split scenario, I don’t think it would have been possible for anyone to agree which was the “real” Bitcoin chain anymore. Large companies like Coinbase had agreed to support both chains. The 2MB chain planned to launch with no replay protection for users, which would have caused massive confusion and loss of funds. As the first clean fork of Bitcoin, with a clear plan and goal of being business-friendly, I expected Bitcoin Cash to be a big winner. The price of Bitcoin Cash has gone up nearly 100% in the past two weeks with many investors speculating on a “Cashening.”
Still scaling issues are not solved and there is no solution in near future.
Bitcoin reaches end of an era
Two large factions of the Bitcoin ecosystem reached an impasse. For individuals and corporations who no longer find the transaction fees and scalability acceptable in Bitcoin, the simplest solution is to leave. Those individuals will dump their $7,500 (down to $6,600 at press time) Bitcoin on first time buyers as they slowly get out.
“Dumb Money” pouring into Bitcoin
People are exuberant about the price of Bitcoin increasing to nearly 7x the price it was at the beginning of the year. Real-life meetups are full of new faces and first-time investors. The Bitcoin subreddit is full of people cheering each other on about buying their first 0.1 BTC and expecting a 10x annual ROI.
One of the bullish pieces of news driving the mania is that the CME Group plans to add Bitcoin futures this year, potentially making Bitcoin available to billions of dollars worth of new investors. However, Wall Street hedge fund investors are not suckers. Even if a hedge fund wants to buy into Bitcoin, they might try to short it first to drive the price down and shake out weak holders. If they can cause a few billion in losses from the people who bought the top by shorting it all the way down to $3000 (where it was a few months ago), they will.
https://cointelegraph.com/news/bitcoin-reaches-end-of-an-era-expert-blogI think there will be multiple alts that will serve to replace the Bitcoin. Which ones do you think they are? Im voting for Dash, Zencash, Litecoin and to some extent Bitcoin Cash too.