Bitcoin Is Booming Because a Split in the Cryptocurrency Has Been Narrowly Averted
![](https://cdn.nextgov.com/media/img/cd/2017/07/21/072117bitcoinNG/860x394.jpg?1627506630)
Inked Pixels/Shutterstock.com
Bitcoin has risen as much as 28 percent over the past 24 hours.
Bitcoin has risen as much as 28 percent over the past 24 hours, driven by news that an imminent split in the cryptocurrency has been narrowly averted. The price of bitcoin nearly hit $3,000 late on July 20, within spitting distance of its all-time high, set last month.
The price rallied as bitcoin’s miners began broadcasting their support for a less radical proposal, BIP 91, in increasing numbers yesterday. This proposal avoids the so-called “hard fork” by stopping short of altering the hard-coded limit on transaction capacities that is the bone of contention within the bitcoin world, while offering slightly enlarged transaction capacity.
The threshold for activating BIP 91 is 80 percent of all the processing power on the bitcoin network. That was achieved in the early hours of July 21. Currently 97 percent of the processing power on the network, which is largely controlled by miners, is voting in favor of BIP 91.
But it’s not settled yet. Although enough miners have signaled support for their preferred proposal—a process akin to broadcasting a preference over the network—enough of them must now run the software that implements this proposal within the next two and a half days. Failure to maintain a simple majority of the processing power, also called the hash rate, would mean BIP 91 does not activate. This would put the bitcoin world back at square one, with just a week to go before the potentially destabilizing hard fork on Aug. 1.