October was a somewhat disappointing month for cryptocurrencies. During this month, the entire crypto market lost about $18 billion of its already declining value, and that too in a course of a few days. Many cryptocurrencies lost a significant part of their value- Bitcoin was down 5%, Ethereum 12% and XRP 18%. However despite this gloom, there are green shoots in the market- more and more people are getting interested in investing in virtual currencies. There is no doubt that, in future, cryptocurrencies will play a greater role in everyday lives of people.
Let us now see how the cryptocurrency market is changing with these blogs that have been published during the month of October
Those who own Bitcoins now have an exciting reason to rejoice. Another variant of the cryptocurrency is due to be launched soon tentatively called Bitcoin Gold(BTG).
This variant will improve on Bitcoin’s technology by changing the way the rewards are given, thereby changing the very competition for the coins. This will be done through a ‘hard fork’ done earlier in August 2017 when Bitcoin cash was launched.
The last time this ‘hard fork’ was done, Bitcoin owners rejoiced as they got a bonanza of billions of Dollars almost overnight.
With this expected fork, industry observers are expecting something along similar lines, but the final results may be a little different than what is expected.
When you purchase Bitcoin Cash, you need to ensure that it does not lie in an Online Cryptocurrency Exchange account. This makes the Bitcoins susceptible to fraud and hacking attempts. You should move the Bitcoins in a secure wallet that is certified by Bitcoin/Bitcoin Cash.
Ethereum is an open source blockchain platform from where you can mine the ‘Ethereum’ cryptocurrency. First released in July 2015, Ethereum has now become one of the most traded cryptocurrencies, its value is just behind that of Bitcoin. Ethereum is a distributed digital public blockchain network, where miners work to earn Ether, a token currency which is also used for paying transaction fees and services on the distributed network of Ethereum.
Bitcoin’s value has seen periods of extreme volatility. Between November to December 2017, it increased 223 percent, before falling 59% by February 2018. By March 2018, it dropped again by about 40 percent.
This does not mean that you need to give up on Bitcoins or cryptocurrencies altogether, there are a few reasons for which the volatility exists. These reasons are somewhat similar to that of the stock market. Lets discuss them in detail.