Amid nervousness in the cryprocurrency market, bitcoin has seen more than $12 billion wiped off its value in the last 30 days as it hit a near one-month low on Wednesday.
According to data from CoinDesk, noting its lowest level since June 15, when it slumped to $2,185.96, the price of bitcoin fell to $2,272.32.
Al time high was reached on June 11, just over a month ago, at $3,025.47 and the price was also significantly off that price. Bitcoin’s market capitalization or value has fallen by $12.2 billion in this timeframe.
After huge rallies, in the cryptocurrency world, a major pullback is taking place at the moment. Since the start of the year, it had seen a more than 600 percent rally when bitcoin hit its record high in June.
A part of the reason for the pullback would be the frothiness in the market at the moment wqhich has raised concerns. Warning about a potential bubble in cryptocurrencies was given by Richard Turnill, BlackRock's global chief investment strategist, earlier this week.
"I look at the charts, and to me that looks pretty scary," Turnill said, according to a Reuters report.
With some unsure about the future trading pattern for bitcoin, uncertainty has also crept into cryptocurrency traders.
"I'm waiting for more downside before I rebuy, but frankly I'm even having trouble telling what it's going to do, which probably reflects the uncertainty in the market itself," cryptocurrency trader Jason Hamilton, said.
Also a notable investor in cryptocurrencies is Roy Sebag, who is the CEO of GoldMoney, a platform to let people buy and trade the precious metal. But he sold most of his bitcoin holdings because the market has reached the top, the entrepreneur said on Twitter.
A planned change to the underlying code of the cryptocurrency's protocol is also a cause of nervousness within the bitcoin community. Because the size of transactions on the blockchain, which is the technology that underpins the cyrptocurrency, is limited, bitcoin transactions are taking longer than ever to process.
On how to increase the block size and speed up transactions, this so called “scaling debate” has led to two separate proposals. Transactions by users are turned into a complex math solution after they are gathered into "blocks". In order to determine if the transaction is possible, the so-called miners work these solutions out using high-powered computers. The transactions are approved and the miners are rewarded in bitcoin once other miners also check the puzzle is correct.
But the speed at which these are processed is slowing as there is a big backlog in transactions. That's because only a certain amount of transactions through in one block is allowed according to the rules of bitcoin.
A solution known as SegWit has been proposed by Bitcoin Core, a group of developers that guard bitcoin's code. Under this, the block size would increase as this would lead to a so-called "soft fork". But less fees for miners, which are the people who verify and process transactions on the blockchain could be the result.
But an alternative code change known as Bitcoin Unlimited has been suggested by these miners who are unhappy with SegWit. This would make their version of the bitcoin protocol incompatible with the original version and would increase the block size significantly.
The bitcoin blockchain would be split in two, and even resulting in two separate coins, as a result of this with a resultant "hard fork".
Investors would theoretically then hold some of the original bitcoin tokens, as well as the new Bitcoin Unlimited.
"Not everyone is on the same page, there are people worried, some may be selling bitcoin," Lee said.
(Source:www.cnbc.com)
According to data from CoinDesk, noting its lowest level since June 15, when it slumped to $2,185.96, the price of bitcoin fell to $2,272.32.
Al time high was reached on June 11, just over a month ago, at $3,025.47 and the price was also significantly off that price. Bitcoin’s market capitalization or value has fallen by $12.2 billion in this timeframe.
After huge rallies, in the cryptocurrency world, a major pullback is taking place at the moment. Since the start of the year, it had seen a more than 600 percent rally when bitcoin hit its record high in June.
A part of the reason for the pullback would be the frothiness in the market at the moment wqhich has raised concerns. Warning about a potential bubble in cryptocurrencies was given by Richard Turnill, BlackRock's global chief investment strategist, earlier this week.
"I look at the charts, and to me that looks pretty scary," Turnill said, according to a Reuters report.
With some unsure about the future trading pattern for bitcoin, uncertainty has also crept into cryptocurrency traders.
"I'm waiting for more downside before I rebuy, but frankly I'm even having trouble telling what it's going to do, which probably reflects the uncertainty in the market itself," cryptocurrency trader Jason Hamilton, said.
Also a notable investor in cryptocurrencies is Roy Sebag, who is the CEO of GoldMoney, a platform to let people buy and trade the precious metal. But he sold most of his bitcoin holdings because the market has reached the top, the entrepreneur said on Twitter.
A planned change to the underlying code of the cryptocurrency's protocol is also a cause of nervousness within the bitcoin community. Because the size of transactions on the blockchain, which is the technology that underpins the cyrptocurrency, is limited, bitcoin transactions are taking longer than ever to process.
On how to increase the block size and speed up transactions, this so called “scaling debate” has led to two separate proposals. Transactions by users are turned into a complex math solution after they are gathered into "blocks". In order to determine if the transaction is possible, the so-called miners work these solutions out using high-powered computers. The transactions are approved and the miners are rewarded in bitcoin once other miners also check the puzzle is correct.
But the speed at which these are processed is slowing as there is a big backlog in transactions. That's because only a certain amount of transactions through in one block is allowed according to the rules of bitcoin.
A solution known as SegWit has been proposed by Bitcoin Core, a group of developers that guard bitcoin's code. Under this, the block size would increase as this would lead to a so-called "soft fork". But less fees for miners, which are the people who verify and process transactions on the blockchain could be the result.
But an alternative code change known as Bitcoin Unlimited has been suggested by these miners who are unhappy with SegWit. This would make their version of the bitcoin protocol incompatible with the original version and would increase the block size significantly.
The bitcoin blockchain would be split in two, and even resulting in two separate coins, as a result of this with a resultant "hard fork".
Investors would theoretically then hold some of the original bitcoin tokens, as well as the new Bitcoin Unlimited.
"Not everyone is on the same page, there are people worried, some may be selling bitcoin," Lee said.
(Source:www.cnbc.com)
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