Bitcoin price continues to fall, could Dash become the biggest winner?

Recently, the price of Bitcoin has continued to fall, with a drop of more than 7% on Friday. In the past two days, the market value has lost at least 20亿美元. This is the first time in nearly a month that the price of Bitcoin has fallen below $1,100. This article analyzes the factors that led to the price drop and the resulting industry impact.

It is clear that most of the authoritative companies in the Bitcoin community believe that although the hard fork has not yet arrived, it is inevitable. Their joint statement has caused anxiety in the entire investment market. Dozens of large Bitcoin exchanges, including Bitfinex, Shapeshift, BTCC, Kraken and Bitstamp, have detailed their emergency plans for dealing with the Bitcoin Unlimited (BU) fork in their statements, although the BU fork violates the original intention of Bitcoin's creation. The following is an excerpt from the statement (you can find the full text of the statement here):

In the event of a contentious hard fork, with adequate replay protection in place, the Bitcoin Core chain will still be listed as BTC (or XBT), while the new forked chain will be listed as BTU (XBU). We made this decision not out of rational judgment, but out of practical considerations.

Who is the winner?

As the controversy over Bitcoin hard forks becomes increasingly intense, who is the biggest beneficiary? Some people said in interviews with mainstream media that Ethereum (ETH) is the most direct beneficiary because the price of ETH has recently shown a leap-forward rise.

Gatecoin CEO Aurélien Menant told CNBC:

Bitcoin traders may want to minimize the impact of Bitcoin when a hard fork is coming or when the expansion problem is deadlocked, and ether seems to be the best choice. Currently, the trading volume of Bitcoin against ether continues to rise, and it has become the biggest competitor of Bitcoin to fiat currency trading liquidity.

In my opinion, traders see DASH as a safe haven asset in the event of a Bitcoin fork, and yesterday’s trading volume has proven this: gold and ETH prices have not seen a significant increase, Bitcoin has lost 10% of its value, while DASH has increased by 11% . At press time, DASH is over 780人民币. ETH’s price has been rising since the Enterprise Ethereum Alliance (EEA) was founded a month ago. It just so happens that the fork debate is intensifying at this time.

Look who's here

Yesterday, Bitcoin’s upcoming hard fork received an unexpected comment, with former Mt. Gox CEO Mark Karpeles issuing a warning in a tweet:

After the Bitcoin hard fork, exchanges will have to suspend Bitcoin withdrawals and transfer Bitcoin to avoid transaction replay attacks.

Regardless of who wins the debate, or whether yesterday’s joint statement is a good or bad thing, Bitcoin may be better off if the split successfully activates Segregated Witness (SegWit) and those who oppose it leave and create new altcoins. ETH has done well after last year’s fork, so it’s impossible not to give up something in the face of an inevitable event. As some “big players” in the market say, we seem to be heading towards a fork.