Today Bitcoin fell below $1,900 from around $2,600, since the fast approaching of August 1st deadline nears. Seemingly considerably increasing uncertainty among traders and investors.
Bitcoin has been experiencing a downtrend for much of June and July, falling from around $3,000 to just above $1,900 at the time of writing, with the downwards trend having a high risk of just continue thru the coming days.
Image source: cryptowatch1. item
The main reason is probably because the currency is having potential hard fork on august 1st. Which leads to great uncertainty in the crypto community.
I tried to get in touch with Jeff Garzik, the lead maintainer of the new segwit2x client, to gain some clarity on the relationship between segwit2x and Bitcoin Core, but I have not been able to reach him at the time of writing.
Segwit2x implements segwit largely unchanged, but there are suggestions after the activation the client may only accept segwit blocks, while Bitcoin Core would accept both segwit and non-segwit blocks, which may lead to a split.
However, as almost 90% of the miners seem to be supporting segwit2x, it appears unlikely any miner would produce non-segwit blocks, so they would probably remain in consensus.
On the bigger blocks side there is Bitcoin Unlimited and BitcoinABC which largely follows the approach of Bitcoin Unlimited but goes further in implementing a User Activated Hard-Fork that will chain-split regardless of miners support.
There are indications some miners will support them, including ViaBTC and potentially the bitcoin.com mining pool which may give its miners the option of supporting the BitcoinABC chain.
As such, we are likely to have at least two bitcoins on August the 1st, but there may be even more. Bitcoiners, therefore, are strongly advised to not transact on that day until the situation becomes more clear.
Once the chain does split, BitcoinABC will probably be listed in at least one exchange, thus a period of high volatility and perhaps even trading frenzy should be expected as the market passes judgment on the value of the bitcoins.
Eventually, the new coin would regain most of bitcoin's current value.
Which one of these options is only the free market that can tell us sometime next month as bitcoin finally makes huge decision.