The Bitcoin marketplace has become a sort of chaotic mess, as the hardfork altcoin Bitcoin Cash (BCH) has surged. Many pundits have embraced the new altcoin as a way to honor the original Bitcoin vision of Satoshi Nakamoto. In contrast to the original BTC, BCH offers 8MB block sizes and faster transaction times.
As the new NYA-proposed SegWit2X hard fork has been put to an untimely end, the Bitcoin community expected stability and increasing prices. However, quite the opposite happened for Bitcoin as the price has sustained a substantial decline over the past couple of days.
As Bitcoin rapidly dropped in value, BCH has responded in the opposite way, pulling investors and consumers away from the original core chain, moving large amounts of volume into the BCH camp, and producing . So intense was the price shift, that even Vitalik Buterin publicly congratulated the chain’s growth.
Bitcoin Cash or Bitcoin Core?
Bitcoin Cash has continued to surprise the majority of BTC holders. The price has moved in huge swings, often as much as $500 in a matter of a few hours. As volatility increases and the market continues to correct and swing, prices will continue to move back and forth between the two contentious forks. Both have their followers, and the winning coin will have a sizable following after the dust settles.
However, among many industry insiders the results of the contention are not critical. Regardless of which fork succeeds, the general goal among cryptocurrency advocates is that support will continue to grow in the general marketplace. David Sønstebø Founder and Chairman of IOTA said:
"The entire Bitcoin/Bitcoin Cash drama and fork fiasco highlights just how stagnant Bitcoin is both as a technology and community, as well as how the centralized miners have the ability to manipulate the market at a whim. Furthermore it really shows the inherent limitations of Blockchain architecture. No matter which route the quorum decides to go in, it will have a negligible effect on Bitcoin's adoption as a transactional settlement layer.”