Bitcoin Price News August 2017: Virtual Currency Passes $4,000 Value Mark
Bitcoin has breached the $4,000 mark as the market goes increasingly confident that improved transaction times will give rise to the further adoption of the cryptocurrency. Its value has soared by 15 percent this weekend, peaking at $4,125.17 on Monday, Aug. 14.
A Bitcoin revamp called SegWit2x has resulted in serious discussions about the future of the digital tender; so much so that people with opposing opinions have gone off and made another currency, Bitcoin Cash, in response.
The proposed changes came about as surging interest in Bitcoin has exposed issues with the design of the virtual currency. Transaction volumes threaten to overwhelm the speed by which the decentralized mechanisms of Blockchain technology could process them, and a plan was put in place to address these concerns.
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Arthur Hayes, the founder of Hong Kong-based bitcoin exchange BitMex, noted how the transaction speed initially worried Bitcoin investors. "Up until now a lot of people didn't really believe bitcoin could go any higher until the scaling issue is resolved," he said, as quoted by Bloomberg.
"With this actually being implemented on protocol, theoretically the amount of transactions that can be processed at a reasonable speed is going to be much higher, so a lot of people are very bullish about bitcoin now," Hayes added, referring to the changes proposed by SegWit2x.
Bullish is certainly the term to describe it, as Bitcoin jumped to more than $4,100 in value since Friday, Aug. 11 — an increase of about 15 percent. Despite the rift started by the SegWit2x proposal among the Bitcoin community, the new Bitcoin Cash has not proven to be disruptive to Bitcoin's climbing value, as initially feared.
Bitcoin Cash, despite peaking shortly after its birth last week, is now projected to decline to under $300, as News BTC reports.
The next hurdle for Bitcoin, meanwhile, still stands as SegWit2x proposed to double the block size to 2 megabytes this November. It's a move that can bolster support for the virtual currency, or drive investors to Bitcoin Cash instead, whose block size of 8 megabytes have sidestepped this issue entirely.
