Bitcoin Within Striking Distance Of $8,000 As Cryptocurrency Hits Another All-Time High
But things got a bit interesting when the scheduled SegWit2x hard fork, which was set to take place this month, was abruptly canceled last week. A number of community leaders and cryptocurrency miners withdrew their support for SegWit2x, which put the fork in limbo. However, a small group of miners have decided to ahead with the fork anyway, which is now set to take place today.
With this uncertainty, a few cryptocurrency exchanges -- including CoinBase and GDAX -- have taken the added measure of freezing Bitcoin transactions; at least temporarily. You would think that this uncertainty in the marketplace would be detrimental to Bitcoin's valuation, but that is hardly the case. Instead, it's now experiencing another record high.
As of this writing, Bitcoin is within striking distance of $8,000, with a price of $7,973. That pushes the cryptocurrency's market cap to roughly $133 billion. During today's session, Bitcoin hit a high of $7,998 before settling down to its currently level.
It's a big rebound for Bitcoin, which fell from the high of $7,500 on November 5th to $5,555 when the planned SegWit2x hard fork was suspended. But given the highly volatile nature of Bitcoin, there's no telling where the cryptocurrency will be even a week from today.
"If support for the fork remains at current levels, or decreases, the Bitcoin2x network will be unusable," said Coinbase communications director David Farmer. "Coinbase will not support withdrawals or trading as it will not be possible to move these assets. Currently we believe this is the most likely scenario.
"If the network gains support at a later date, we will enable Bitcoin2x withdrawals from the platform."
If the split is successful, which Farmer doesn't see as being probable, Coinbase will allow Bitcoin2x withdrawals and may enable buys and sells at a later date.
"We operate by the principle that our customers should benefit to the greatest extent possible from hard forks or other unexpected events," Farmer added. "We have invested significant resources to make sure we can prepare for each scenario, and if there is a stable and functioning network we will give customers access to Bitcoin2x funds."
