August 1 marks the eighth anniversary of a key second in Bitcoin’s (BTC) historical past — the preliminary activation of Segregated Witness (SegWit) in 2017, a key software program improve that reshaped the community’s future and triggered a tough fork.
The transfer, often known as “Bitcoin Independence Day,” diminished miner affect over the protocol and led to the creation of Bitcoin Money (BCH), highlighting the neighborhood’s divisions over how Bitcoin ought to scale to help international use.
The “block measurement wars” have been fought between those that wished to maintain the Bitcoin block measurement small and “large blockers,” a coalition of miners and companies that wished to incorporate extra transactions in every block to make BTC appropriate for on a regular basis funds and industrial transactions.
Huge blockers, led by “Bitcoin Jesus,” Roger Ver, argued that Bitcoin fell in need of Satoshi Nakamoto’s imaginative and prescient of a peer-to-peer digital money system since its ledger’s restricted block area may by no means scale sufficient to accommodate the world’s transactions.
Node operators, builders and BTC customers mounted a powerful opposition to the larger block proposals, arguing that elevating the block measurement would additionally improve storage necessities for node operators.
A possible improve in storage necessities would make operating a node prohibitive for the common consumer, thereby centralizing the Bitcoin community within the palms of some massive gamers who may run the required {hardware}.
Bitcoin Enchancment Proposal (BIP) 91 was activated in August 2017, paving the way in which for scaling via the BTC Lightning Community, a manner of facilitating offchain cost channels between two or extra customers, with one closing settlement on the Bitcoin ledger.
On Aug. 1, 2017, the large blockers break up from the Bitcoin community, leading to BCH creation and altering Bitcoin historical past perpetually.
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Bitcoin and BCH, the place are they now?
For the reason that Bitcoin Money onerous fork in August 2017, the worth has oscillated, hitting an all-time excessive of about $1,600 in Might 2021 in the course of the earlier bull market cycle.
Nonetheless, the worth quickly collapsed, hitting an all-time low of about $90 in the course of the 2022 bear market. At the moment, BCH is buying and selling at about $552 — the identical value ranges it was buying and selling at eight years in the past, instantly following its debut.
In the meantime, the worth of Bitcoin has appreciated by about 4,200% throughout that very same eight-year interval. On Aug. 1, 2017, BTC was buying and selling palms at about $2,718 and is at present buying and selling at about $115,000, down from its all-time excessive of about $122,000 recorded in July.
Right this moment, Bitcoin boasts a market cap of over $2.2 trillion, whereas Bitcoin Money has a complete market cap of round $10.9 billion.
The schism between the 2 networks highlights the talk between those that need to use the BTC community for a wide range of functions, together with retail purchases and file storage, versus these defining BTC as a decentralized retailer of worth — a battle that also rages in the present day.
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