[12 July 2017] Why is The Market So Sluggish?

This is an update for my previous post on the impending Bitcoin Fork and what you should know. 

Many of you have heard of the fork by now and how it’s affecting the market. People I spoke to expect that there will be little action in the cryptocurrency market till Bitcoin stabilizes. So 1st August is a very big deal.

The User Activated Soft Fork, BIP 148 will take place then whether the miners support it or not. If there is indeed a split between miners and users, and as of now, that is certainly the case, we will be seeing two types of Bitcoin token. Bitcoin 148 for those going with the upgrade and Bitcoin Legacy for those following the current chain. 

Then it’s a race to see which protocol gains more traction. 

The good news is that each Bitcoin would effectively be copied to both chains, so the casual holder don’t have to worry about what goes into the sausage. Your Bitcoin is safe….. BUT…

There’s a big BUT here. It’s safe only if you actually have direct access to your Bitcoin. That means you either have it stashed away in your e-wallet where you have the private key access to it or it’s in your hardware wallet in your possession. If your BTC is used to purchase other altcoins or held by a service provider that isn’t upgrading to BIP148, your Bitcoin is effectively in the legacy chain. 

A few things can happen following August 1st. Scenario A – BIP148 soft fork gains majority of the votes, goes hard fork, killing off the legacy chain value and the Bitcoins attached to it. Scenario B – BIP 148 don’t get the majority of the votes and reverts to legacy chain, thus killing off all the Bitcoins that were transacted on the upgraded chain. Scenario C – BTC doesn’t get to fork for some reason, and BTC continues to languish in its every increasing scalability issue and another coin, probably like LTC, surpasses it.

The reason why BTC is so sluggish now is that people are not transacting in BTC because you may send or receive either BTC 148 or BTC legacy. And imagine the coin that you are holding becomes worthless tomorrow. So people are waiting to see what happens.

If you have some time on your hands and feeling nerdy, you can read more on the SegWit soap opera here, here, here.