Screenshot from Coindance showing BIP 91 has now locked in
BIP 91 Locked In
I posted a couple of days ago about BIP 91 - this is a Bitcoin Improvement Proposal that once locked in would prevent activation of the UASF (or BIP 148) which has been the source of so much fear in the markets.
Well BIP 91 has now locked in which means that SegWit will soon become active on Bitcoin!
Anticipation of this happening seems to have already pushed the Bitcoin price up to new highs (for this month).
So what happens next?
Well as I understand it after a further 2 days of blocks BIP 91 will activate - this is a grace period to give people time to change their software to signal for Segwit. SegWit will activate roughly 2 activation periods (4 weeks) after this.
Thanks to @cardboard for his infographic which clarifies this in an easy to read manner.
Given the extremely positive reaction that there has been to the rising signalling of BIP 91 I think we will see a lot of people who were holding off on buying Bitcoin entering the market again.
There could be some steep gains, perhaps even conclusively breaking the $3K ceiling and making a new floor.
Strong FOMO could even push it some way beyond that.
Overall I think we will see the cryptocurrency markets turn more bullish again.
As I have explained before the more money that flows into bitcoin, the larger the total supply available to altcoins becomes as well.
So it is all plain sailing from here then?
Not quite as previously discussed the next hurdle will come in roughly two months time (after SegWit activation - so late October at the earliest) when there is a planned doubling in Bitcoin block size as per the SegWit 2x plan.
This will require an actual hard fork. As part of the "New York Agreement" - the same mining pools and companies which have signalled/supported BIP 91 have pledged that they will support the hard fork.
Despite this we may see renewed fear and uncertainty at that point as the words "hard fork" tend to scare a lot of people in the bitcoin community.
Given how relatively smoothly this has gone it seems likely that may also end up causing less turmoil (than expected) in practice.
We will have to wait and see.
Anyway it's quite late here and I will be going to bed shortly so may not be able to respond to all comments until tomorrow.
