The rejection of Winklevoss’ Bitcoin ETF on Fri yesteryear the SEC, caused some of the to a greater extent than well-capitalized altcoins similar Ether together with DASH to appreciate inwards value over the weekend.
However, the escalating tension surrounding the ongoing fence regarding the transaction capacity of Bitcoin’s blockchain network intensified farther on Mon when BITMAIN co-founder, Jihan Wu, announced on Twitter that Antpool - 1 of the largest mining pools inwards the world, owned & operated yesteryear BITMAIN - volition live on directing all of its hashing ability to mine
Bitcoin Unlimited blocks.
Wu’s unexpected annunciation had an fifty-fifty to a greater extent than noticeable touching on on the altcoin marketplace position than the Bitcoin ETF rejection. The marketplace position capitalization of the entire altcoin marketplace position surged to a novel tape of $5 billion, according to figures yesteryear
CoinMarketCap.
Ether, which hitting a 6-month high concluding Fri against Bitcoin, rallied fifty-fifty higher on Mon to a 10-month high of 0.0253 on Poloniex, a U.S.-based cryptocurrency exchange. And on Bitfinex, the ETH/USD couplet hitting an all-time high of $30.60:
Other altitude option cryptocurrencies similar Monero (XMR), Litecoin (LTC), MaidSafeCoin (MAID), Factom (FCT),
Storj (SJCX) together with Zcash (ZEC) appreciated yesteryear double-digit percentages on Monday.
The exclusively exception was DASH, which declined to a greater extent than than 14% on Mon from a daily high of 0.06583 downwardly to some 0.05644 yesteryear 1:30 p.m. EST.
Other less-known digital currencies also saw pregnant gains on Monday; GNT, the token of the
Golem distributed computing network, spiked to to a greater extent than than 20%; REP, the token of the
Augur prediction marketplace, which run on the Ethereum blockchain, spiked unopen to 18%; Namecoin, a cryptocurrency focusing on DNS decentralization together with censorship resistance, which has been inwards a downtrend since 2015, spike to a greater extent than than 250% today.
After
Wu’s Tweet, many Bitcoin evangelists, proponents together with supporters, took to Twitter & Reddit to limited their disapproval. Vinny Lingam, CEO of blockchain identity startup, CivicKey,
said on Twitter:
“Danger on the horizon. If Bitcoin forks, all bets are off together with nosotros tin dismiss kiss $3k BTC inwards 2017 goodbye…”
While some cryptocurrency investors convey begun divesting some of their BTC holdings due to mounting risks of a dissever inwards Bitcoin’s network (also known equally a hardfork), the cost of Bitcoin remained quite stable on Monday, trading inwards a tight hit betwixt $1216 together with $1247.
It should live on noted that the run a jeopardy of a hardfork inwards the Bitcoin blockchain is depression at the introduce time, only the amount of nodes supporting Bitcoin Unlimited (BU) has been steadily growing over the yesteryear ii months.
Data compiled yesteryear
NodeCounter shows the amount of pro-BU nodes on the Bitcoin network climbed to a tape high of 775 on Saturday, March 11:
NodeCounter charts also demo that equally of today, BU miners convey mined to a greater extent than blocks than pro-Segwit miners on the network: 308 vs. 256 over the concluding one one thousand blocks, respectively.
Bitcoin Unlimited together with Bitcoin Classic miners currently concern human relationship for 31.3% of the hashing ability on the Bitcoin network (1000+ Ph/s on March 12, 2017, vs. 568 Ph/s on Feb 28, 2017):
Bitcoin Core supporters who disagree amongst the BU proposal together with dorsum the
Segwit soft-fork upgrade path, currently convey the bulk of the nodes on the Bitcoin network.
