The short-term worries over bitcoin’s future are officially over.
As Bloomberg reports, the cryptocurrency surged to fresh all-time highs today, just days after a major rift in the community split the currency in two:
The digital exchange rate jumped as much as 16 percent from Friday to an unprecedented $3,292.41, even after bitcoin’s division last week. The debate has revolved around how to upgrade its underlying technology, with a group of developers backing a solution called SegWit2x against miners — some of whom have created an offshoot called Bitcoin Cash — who want to increase the size of data blocks more drastically.
“The miner-orchestrated hard fork has had limited traction and will not impact the price or future development of bitcoin,” said Aurelien Menant, chief executive officer of Gatecoin Ltd., a cryptocurrency exchange in Hong Kong, referring to the split. “The activation of SegWit is a significant milestone in bitcoin’s technological evolution.”
As bitcoin’s popularity has soared, its transaction speed has in turn slowed to a crawl. By increasing the block sizes, miners and traders hope the speed will jump back up again, thus making it more accessible to all. In November, the block size is set to double, although some worry it won’t be enough.
For now, though, the worries seem to be completely inconsequential. Bitcoin prices were trading at $3,407.98 on Monday morning, up 4.70% on the day.