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 …

Following its hard fork on May 15, bitcoin cash (BCH) appears to have experienced a two-block chain reorganization resulting in a 3,392 BCH (about $1.35 million at press time) double spend. The claim was made in a report released by the research arm of cryptocurrency derivatives exchange BitMex on May 24. Per the report, the recent BCH hard fork experienced three interrelated issues. Firstly, an apparent bug evidently exploited by an attacker right after the hard fork. The attacker was able to “broadcast transactions which met the mempool validity conditions but failed the consensus checks.” Miners attempting to produce blocks …

Two miners have reportedly executed a 51% attack on the bitcoin cash (BCH) blockchain, according to tweets by Cryptoconomy Podcast host Guy Swann on May 24. A 51% attack occurs when someone controls the majority of mining power on a Proof-of-Work blockchain network. This means that the majority block verifier can prevent other users from mining and reverse transactions. While many have assumed that a 51% attack would be carried out with malicious intent, the above case happened as the two mining pools attempted to prevent an unidentified party from taking some coins that — due to a code update …

Average bitcoin (BTC) transaction fees increased by nearly 200% in April compared to March, a report released by crypto research firm Diar on May 6. The report also notes that bitcoin miners earned $13.7 million from fees alone — over 71% up from $3.9 million — the amount they made from fees during the previous month. The overall mining earnings in April were $291 million, up nearly 30% compared to March. The on-chain transaction volume has reportedly risen 43% during April and resulted in full blocks, while Segregated Witness (SegWit) approached 40% of the total transactions per block and blocks …

October 31 marks the ten year anniversary of the release of the Bitcoin white paper, which was authored by Satoshi Nakamoto, and whose identity still remains a mystery. In this relatively short period of time, Bitcoin has challenged the way modern society looks at global finance and banking, and has been the catalyst for the birth of over a thousand different cryptocurrencies as well as many more blockchain projects. Its history has been full of highs and lows, as the volatile cryptocurrency has battled through years fraught with controversy and success. With the release of the white paper, a movement …

The evolution of key industries have been historically driven by groundbreaking technological innovations that leave an indelible mark on society. The printing press led to the scientific revolution, the discovery of electricity brought light to the world, radio waves changed the way information was delivered to the masses, and the internet completely overhauled the way we communicate and interact with information. In the same vein, over the short space of a decade, Bitcoin has had a similarly disruptive and innovative effect on the financial world and the technology underpinning cryptocurrency has gone on to influence a number of sectors in …

From soft and hard forks to protocol upgrades, to the implementation of Segwit and to the future outlook of the Lightning Network (LN), the Bitcoin network has come a long way since its inception in January 2009. As of Sept. 18, 2018, the average block size on the Bitcoin network is .8MB and the average number of transactions per block is 1609 — so a few eyebrows were raised when a block over 2MB was added to the blockchain on Sept. 5, 2018. Bitcoin block 540107 came in at 2.26MB; in terms of megabytes, a block this big has never …

A team of Bitcoin (BTC) engineers has announced the launch of the Bitcoin Operations Technology Group (Bitcoin Optech) addressing the problem of Bitcoin’s scalability, according to their statement published July 20. Bitcoin Optech is a non-profit organization backed by leading industry players like PayPal Board Member Wences Casares, executive of Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co. Ltd John Pfeffer, and cryptocurrency research and development group Chaincode Labs. At this stage, Bitcoin Optech focuses on “operational technical work, such as segwit usage, transaction batching, fee estimation and coin selection,” helping companies integrate the rapidly developing technology. Working closely with engineers from companies …

Bitcoin Core version 0.16.1, a new major version including new features and performance improvements, has been officially released, according to an announcement made June 15. The new release reportedly includes “new features, various bugfixes and performance improvements, as well as updated translations.” Notably, this Bitcoin Core version removed miner block size recalling the deprecation of the “-blockmaxsize” option for miners to limit their blocks’ sizes in version 0.15.1. It states that miners now should apply “-blockmaxweight” option if they want to limit the weight of their blocks. Additionally, the upgrade affected wallets which were created in 0.16 and later. They …

A Bitcoin Cash (BCH) upgrade that will both increase block size from 8MB to 32MB and add or reactivate Bitcoin script operation codes (Op codes) has been activated today, May 15. The hard fork used the Median Time Past (MTP) for initiation, going live on next block after the MTP timestamp of 1526400000 at 16:14 UTC. Bitcoin ABC, a Bitcoin Cash full node implementation, posted on April 1 that the Bitcoin ABC 0.17.1 full node upgrade testnet was available, noting that all BCH full nodes needed to upgrade and that major exchanges and wallets were being notified. BitcoinCash.org also wrote …

Bitcoin’s (BTC) blockchain hit a unique milestone in April as the 17 millionth BTC was mined. If you’re wondering why this number is significant, it’s because there are only four mln tokens left to mine before the 21 mln BTC cap is reached. However, the truth is that most people alive today are unlikely to see that happen. Bitcoin’s blockchain protocol makes mining more difficult as more miners join the pool, and the Bitcoin reward for mining a block also halves every 210,000 blocks. As it stands, miners receive a 12.5 BTC reward for unlocking a new block. According to …

The Bitcoin Core client version which provides “full support” to Segregated Witness (‘SegWit’) scaling technology finally received its official release Monday, Feb. 26. A circular to the Core mailing list confirms the raft of upgrades in addition to the historic SegWit move, the forthcoming release having been announced on Github earlier this month. “This is a new major version release, including new features, various bugfixes and performance improvements, as well as updated translations,” the circular reads echoing the Github announcement. Core Developer Peter Todd was among official sources confirming the release. ...and good timing, Bitcoin Core v0.16.0 has been officially …