Another rocky week in crypto: $150 million trapped in Ethereum, Bitcoin Cash briefly secures more mining share, Segwit2x hard fork cancelled
We just witnessed one of the wildest weeks in the crypto world, with the global cryptocurrency volume hitting $74 billion in transaction volume in the last 4 days, with big news dropping in several of the ecosystem’s largest coins. But I didn’t need to tell you that, even if you’ve just got your eyes glued to the charts, which responded with their own theatrics.
This cryptocurrency industry insight will give you the cutting-edge scoop on the latest news moving the crypto markets.
Ethereum Parity Multisig Bug
A curious user testing out what some kill orders would do on random contracts ended up locking up $150 million of users funds. This is the second bug from the Parity team’s multisig this year, and will take a hard fork to fix, putting the Ethereum team in another difficult position. Market response was mild, with ETH tumbling a gentle 3% before swiftly recovering. But the possibility of a coming fix might yield further oscillations. You can check out the details right here.
Bitcoin Cash Prepares to Update Its DAA
Bitcoin Cash continued with its own development, in particular getting ready to change its Difficult Adjustment Algorithm (DAA). The decision, however, appears to have been made rather suddenly and without much public discourse, leading to a mixed response from users.
The update is an effort to position itself for the Segwit2x fork originally planned for next week, attempting to win over more mining power. The move aims to smooth out the rather choppy experience with their Emergency DAA, which has caused some problems with very inconsistent hashrate. If successfully implemented and well received, it is likely to lead to a more steady and even mining distributing between the two coins, rather than the wild fluctuations that have punctuated the Bitcoin Cash’s first several months of existence.
Segwit2x Cancelled!
I’d call this the icing on the week’s cake, but it’s really more like another cake being plopped down on top of the first one.
Earlier this week, XRayTrade Blog released a post detailing how you traders can prepare yourself and respond to the upcoming Segwit2x fork. There were several different risks and opportunities to be aware of, with some interesting options, but futures markets on Bitfinex and HitBTC.
But in typical crypto fashion, this advice was rendered mostly obsolete within twelve hours when Segwit2x got cancelled.
Well, technically, “postponed indefinitely” would be a better way to phrase it, but most of the leading figures in the NYA released a statement expressing that they no longer supported forking this November. While it was implied that they supported trying again later on, no future date was suggested.
This is easily the biggest news in Bitcoin since Segwit rolled out, and the markets took notice. Bitcoin instantly spike to a new all time high, just falling short of $8000. But it hasn’t fared so well since. It was previously on a downward trajectory that hit as low as $5400 as BCH picked up steam, and reached a staggering high of nearly $2800 on Bitfinex in typical “sell the news” style market move.
It appears as though several prominent members of the Bitcoin community appear to be following through with their promises to leave Bitcoin for Bitcoin Cash if Segwit2x didn’t fall through. It is worth noting, however, that some have been questioning the primary drive behind this big run-up.
The while majority of the Bitcoin Cash traffic at the time seemed to come from Bithumb, the leader in BCH price was Bitfinex. This coincided with a particularly large whale moving 45000 btc (worth approximately $300 million at the time!), including a massive deposit into a Bitfinex account.
With such a large chunk of Bitcoin’s coins becoming liquid again, there are several different ways you could interpret it. This could mean investor confidence in Bitcoin shaking, or for those long-term hodlers, you might see this as a great chance to pick up coins on the cheap. After all, while BTC’s collapse has been stemmed, we are looking at a Bitcoin much cheaper than it was a week ago.
Whatever your take-away, good luck, and happy trading!
