Bitcoin recently reached its highest ever value – that of $3,451.86 per coin, with the source being Coindesk Bitcoin per Index – confirming the value that the coin reached.
Before recently, the coin had never crossed the 3000 dollar barrier, however, new limits were now set. As a result of this increase in value, the value of all bitcoins in existence has also increased – surpassing 56 billion dollars in worth.
Even though the Bitcoin business has seemingly been somewhat risky, the future now seems to be a bit more assuring for Bitcoin, as Coinbase, one of the leading exchange and wallet services, promised to support it after previously refusing to give such a commitment.
The service’s blog announced very recently: “We are planning to have support for Bitcoin Cash by 1 January 2018, assuming no additional risks emerge during that time.”
The value of the original Bitcoin stumbled quite a bit back in July. First, there was concern that there might be a “civil war” over rival plans to speed up transactions. That helped cause its value to dip to $1,938.94 (£1,485) on 16 July before a compromise scheme called Segwit2x gained favour. Then a fresh plan to fork the currency emerged from a group of insiders unhappy with the Segwit2x initiative.
On the 1st of August, an offered was made on their behalf to all the investors – a Bitcoin Cash token to match every original Bitcoin that was owned by them. This resulted in an incompatible version of the blockchain ledger, which is used to keep track of all the past transactions.
The initiative had the potential to undermine the original Bitcoin, particularly if many miners had jumped ship. Miners provide the computer processing power to authorise transactions, and Bitcoin Cash was designed to appeal to their interests.
However, it currently remains more profitable to mine the original Bitcoin’s block chain than that of Bitcoin Cash, and support for the new crypto-currency remains limited.
