Bitcoin’s Top 7 from 2017
To call 2017 an exciting year in Bitcoin wouldn’t quite do it justice.
Whatever you wanted, you got it — technical progress, mainstream press mania, internal drama, and everyone’s favorite, price swings.
It would be a herculean task to give a detailed breakdown of all of the important events from the past year, but we’re going to do our best to provide at least a loose outline of what we think were the seven most important events of the year.
Segwit’s Rocky Rollout
The year kicked off with tensions brewing over segwit’s stalled rollout. With only 30% of hashpower showing support, and no sign of a blocksize increase, a lot of the community was left wondering if and how Bitcoin would be able to move forward to welcome new users.
Several different factions started proposing alternative methods to end the deadlock.
The more extreme proponents of segwit started rallying behind different User Activated Soft Fork (UASF) proposals. Hat sales skyrocketed.
On the other side of the fence, support had rallied behind Bitcoin Unlimited. Unfortunately for them, the software’s reputation took a substantial hit when its nodes suffered a series of network-wide crashes in March and April.
Yet another faction emerged as a group of businesses brought forward Segwit2x as a proposed compromise between segwit and a blocksize increase. Unfortunately, as they would find out, trying to make everyone happy often ends up with making no one happy.
The UASF movement ended up coalescing behind an August 1st deadline, where they threatened to fork any blocks no signalling segwit at that point.
Scrambling to avoid a chain split, Segwit2x brought their software in line with this goal, and by August 1st, Segwit was locked in and set to activate. By the end of the month, Bitcoin had its much needed bug-fix rolled out.
BitcoinABC Creates Bitcoin Cash
But not everyone agreed, and the refugees from Bitcoin Unlimited weren’t out of the picture. The anti-segwit support had shifted toward the Bitmain-created BitcoinABC client, which then became the software of choice for the big blockers.
Vehemently opposed to a chain with Segwit deployed, they planned their own fork of the network. As August 1st arrived, the main chain locked in Segwit, and BitcoinABC split off to create their own fork of the network, now known as Bitcoin Cash.
While a lot of the tension was released by this hard-fork, the political divisions remained clear. The two sides fought over which was the “real” Bitcoin, and even though it only comprised a small fraction of both price and traffic, several companies and prominent figures publicly backed the new coin.
Two Networks and NO2X
As the mining industry rocked back and forth having to deal with two significant cryptocurrencies running SHA-256, everyone’s attention turned toward November. This was the time at which Segwit2x planned to double the blocksize.
Much of the userbase and developers said no, and the new battleground formed.
But at least some things the whole community could agree upon. In early October, Jamie Dimon of JPMorgan Chase called Bitcoin a fraud, and for a brief moment, everyone in Bitcoin agreed on something — how wrong he was.
Meanwhile, new hats emerged upon the scene. A conspiracy theory about a devious chatroom was gleefully seized up as Dragon’s Den hats emerged. Also NO2X because a way to broadcast ones opposition to the hard fork section of Segwit2x.
Community groups started to voice their opposition. Starting with our very own Seoul Bitcoin Meetup’s statement, more and more groups rallied against the proposed hardfork.
By early November, the public outcry was too much, and the inner circle of signatories called the whole thing off.
Segwit2x was cancelled, and markets went wild.
China Bans Bitcoin, Episode XXXXVI
Ok, I know you’re sick of hearing about this habitually misreported claim, but the Chinese authorities actually did take some meaningful action this year.
While they didn’t outright ban Bitcoin, they did crack down on exchanges — hard.
During the first half of the year, deposits and withdrawals were frozen all across the Middle Kingdom. Mining continued as normal, and there was no widespread panic in Bitcoin as some might have predicted. Incidentally, action on Korean exchanges took a sudden upturn during this period of time, leading to more than a little bit of speculation in that regard.
Rise of the Kimchi Premium
Here in Seoul, we saw the first rise of the Kimchi premium in the spring of 2017 as Korean prices soared above the rest of the world, reaching as high as 50% for a single afternoon.
Extreme price runups in various nations across the world aren’t unheard of in crypto world, but the Korean case was exceptional considering it’s staggeringly high volume and highly developed blockchain ecosystem.
Various groups scrambled to get in on the action, and within a few short weeks, everything had settled back down to normal (if there is any such thing as “normal” in crypto world).
But by the end of the year, it was back, and in full force. On the heels of Segwit2x’s cancellation, Bitcoin Cash’s various pump and dumps, and rising crypto-mania, 2017 closed out in Korea with premiums reaching back for all time highs. And this time, they were sticking around longer than in the spring, partly fueled by a series of somewhat conflicting government statements.
bitHolla Launches XRayTrade
In December, we at XRayTrade released the first version of our advanced trading terminal for professional crypto traders.
With an original sleek UI and unrivaled access to features, such as hotkey and macros, XRayTrade is out to make the crypto trading space more efficient and professional than ever.
