“It’s now silly and stupid to send a bitcoin transaction less than $10 or $20 because the fee is $0.50 to $10 and that makes that prohibitive.” — Erik Vorhees, Shapeshift CEO
Just a little over a year ago, all eyes in crypto were fixated on a monumental event: Bitcoin’s hard fork which spawned Bitcoin Cash. The hard fork represented more than a technical formality, but also a profound schism within the Bitcoin community. With such an unprecedented event in Bitcoin’s relatively short history, levels of uncertainty were extremely high. Since it’s been over a year, let’s take a look back and reflect on the event that continues to have resounding ramifications in the cryptocurrency community.
Background
With a rising concern pertaining to Bitcoin’s lack of scalability and increasing transactions cost, opposing ideologies tied to Bitcoin’s true purpose began to emerge. The rising fees and slow transaction speeds were further exacerbated with the rapid growth in the Bitcoin network.
In order to quail differences and hopefully alleviate the problems plaguing Bitcoin, the New York Agreement of May 2017…
