Why did Bitcoin fork and split? The inability of the community to find consensus regarding a proposal to increase the block size resulted in a user-activated hard fork of the Bitcoin blockchain in August 2017. While numerous proposals advocating a change to the block size limit had failed to gather the support required to manifest change, transaction fees had skyrocketed by mid-2017. During August 2015, the average BTC transaction fee was just $0.50. However, by June 2017, median fees had increased 10x to approximate $5. With nearly half of the world’s population living on less than $5.50 per day, high …

The battle rages on within the Bitcoin community on how to move forward with potential hard fork changes designed to accommodate larger block sizes. Jeff Garzik’s BIP 100 proposal has taken the mining industry by storm, gathering a majority of support of those currently voting. Meanwhile, Bitcoin corporate leaders have formed a united front around the proposal by Mike Hearn and Gavin Andresen called BIP 101. Which side are you on? On Tuesday, August 24, the leaders of many of the largest Bitcoin companies in the world signed off on BIP 101 as their revision of choice. They crafted a …