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 …

If you had the pleasure to watch ‘The Revenant’, you might have noticed how nature helps, as well as torments, the protagonist during his struggle to survive. And it is this protagonist who, despite facing the harshest evils, triumphs over his insufferable pains. He emerges as a hero — tormented yet alive. It might sound like an exaggerated comparison but Bitcoin has seen this same struggle. It had a wonderful year in 2015, with lots of investments and adoptions coming its way. In terms of trading, Bitcoin was named the most profitable investment of 2015 by many mainstream media outlets. …

Bitcoin Core developer Gavin Andresen today proposed a hard fork change for Bitcoin XT in order to allow for an increased block size limit on the Bitcoin network. So far, however, it has failed to appease most critics of his previous proposals to increase the block size limit. Hard Fork It is widely agreed that at some point an increase of the block size limit will be needed to allow the Bitcoin network to handle more than seven transactions per second. The Bitcoin Core development team, however, has so far not been able to reach consensus on the correct timing …

The world’s two largest economies; two of the three most populated countries on earth; much more importantly: the world’s two largest Bitcoin mining communities locking horns in a struggle for power and control over the Bitcoin blockchain. The Far East versus the West; the United States versus China: a classic battle of global superpowers that may not have a winner, but may take the world’s first global currency down in the digital crossfire. Possible implosion The issue of Bitcoin block size is coming to a head within a matter of days. Could a battle over block size between Western businesses …

Overstock sold its first cryptobond, the cryptography team at Blockstream unveiled its first prototype sidechain and more top stories for June 9. Overstock Sells World's First Cryptosecurity Overstock has become the first company to solicit qualified institutional buyers in a digital corporate bond which will trade using blockchain technology. CEO Patrick Byrne purchased the world's first cryptobond for US$500,000. The pioneering development is part of the company's larger cryptofinance initiative known as Medici, on which Overstock expects to sell a total of US$25 million in digital bonds. Overstock CEO Patrick Byrne said: "The cryptorevolution has arrived on Wall Street [...] …

Two of China's biggest bitcoin exchanges - BTCChina and Huobi - have criticized Bitcoin Core developer Gavin Andresen's proposal to raise the block size limit to 20 megabytes by next year. Speaking to Cointelegraph, both BTCChina as well as Huobi indicated that they believe any increase in Bitcoin's block size limit should be approached conservatively. While both exchanges recognize that the current one megabyte block size limit is probably too small for Bitcoin to reach mainstream adoption, they are skeptical of Andresen's proposal. BTCChina and Huobi shared concerns that a jump to 20 megabytes might be too big, while suggesting …

In an announcement made on the Bitcoin development mailing list, Bitcoin core developer and Bitcoin Foundation chief scientist Gavin Andresen suggested that, if the development community could reach no consensus on increasing the one-megabyte block size limit, he would shift his efforts from the main Bitcoin implementation (Bitcoin core) to the alternative Bitcoin-Xt implementation. Such a move could represent a watershed moment for Bitcoin as a whole, as it would mean that its former lead developer would effectively leave his own project to join a forked version. Bitcoin-Xt is a patch placed on top of Bitcoin core and developed by …