Bitcoin Record Numbers

Bitcoin has just risen to over $1,600 for the first time in its short life. Over the last month, bitcoin increased by over 33 percent and there are some that say that increase could become even more drastic in the next few months.

This price rise was initially sparked by Japan legalizing the digital cryptocurrency as a form of payment, which has drastically increased the total number of bitcoin being bought with Japanese currency, yen. Bitcoin also benefited greatly from a rival cryptocurrency called litecoin, who recently changed their code that supports the foundation of litecoin. It’s called SegWit, or Segregated Witness, and it allows for transactions to increase in speed.

So why do a rival cryptocurrencies improvements affect bitcoin? Well, this means that bitcoin could be in for a similar change and the anticipation has really amped up the price. If this happens then the miners of bitcoin will be able to eliminate the backlog in transactions that they are currently experiencing due to the limits on transactions in an individual block. If bitcoin can take the same route that litecoin did, they will be able to increase the block size for bitcoin without having to add another block, which some were worried about the idea of two different cryptocurrencies.

Adding another block is called a “hard fork” which would cause a ton of changes in the technology of bitcoin. The increase in the block size makes for a “soft work” making the transition much easier and doesn’t cause a big disruption. Daniel Masters, the director of Global Advisors Bitcoin Investment (GABI) fund, told CNBS that "That example of a successful soft fork in litecoin has made people start to think that we could get a successful SegWit implementation in bitcoin and that could increase capacity and move us to the next level,"

ReviewBitcoin.com believes while this rise in price is very significant, if you look at the trend of other bitcoin price peaks in the past, you will see that the price tends to see a decline shortly thereafter. Some are expecting a “pullback” to somewhere around $1,100 in the short term but there are high expectations for long term bitcoin price stability. Daniel Masters went on to tell CNBC that "In the 8- to 14-month horizon, my forecast would be around $4,000".