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The cryptocurrency market continued to rebound on Tuesday, crossing the $80 billion-mark after a weekend that saw steep declines across the asset class.

Overall, the market reached a high of $84.9 billion today, up nearly 40% from a low of $61 billion this weekend.

At press time, all of the top 30 cryptocurrencies had posted 24-hour gains, according to data provider Coinmarketcap.

Leading the recovery were the ecosystem's three largest assets by market capitalization bitcoin, ether and XRP, all of which were up more than 10% on the day's trading.

After dropping to below $2,000 this weekend, the price of bitcoin is now trading above $2,300, while ether notably crossed $200 for the first time since July 14.

At press time, the total value of the market was down just over 25% from an all-time high of $115 billion set in mid-June.

Arcade claw image via Shutterstock

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Cryptocurrency Market Crosses $80 Billion As Ether, Bitcoin Prices Gain - CoinDesk

Bitcoin fell below $2,000 for the first time since May amid anxiety its dominant status is under threat.

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Asenthusiasts consider adopting competing updates to the blockchain technology that underpins the exchange method by the end of July, it has raised the possibility of the cryptocurrency splitting in two. Bitcoin has lost about a third of its value since peaking at about $3,000 last month. Calls for a revamp of the software come as exchanges struggled to keep up with rising volumes while the price almost tripled this year.

Bitcoin isnt the only one struggling as the two competing camps -- miners and developers -- are facing off over how to deal with increasing transaction times and processing fees. The 30 largest cryptocurrencies have all suffered declines over the past seven days,according to data from coinmarketcap.com. Bitcoin has lost about 20 percent of its market value, while the second-biggest digital coin -- ethereum -- has lost 30 percent.

Cryptocurrency exchange GDAX said it anticipates temporarily suspending bitcoin deposits and withdrawals after the Aug. 1 software update deadline, and may also pause trading.

"In either scenario we will implement safeguards to ensure the safety of our customers funds," the exchange said in a July 13 post on its website. "This decision will be based on our assessment of the technical risks posed by the fork, such as replay attacks and other factors that could create network instability."

Read more on how bitcoin is perplexing analysts.

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Bitcoin Falls Below $2000 - Bloomberg

Bitcoin reversed steep losses as miners began using new software which aims to bridge an ideological gap that has threatened to divide the cryptocurrency.

The price of bitcoin rose as high as $2,248 before trading at $2,232 as of 3:55 p.m. in Tokyo. The digital currency slumped to as low as $1,758 at the weekend on Coinbases exchange.

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Bitcoins community has been at bitter odds for more than two years about how to solve its scaling problem, which has hampered the cryptocurrencys growth and allowed rivals like ethereum to steal some of the spotlight. The new software, known as SegWit2x, is seen as a compromise for the two sides of the debate: miners who act as the backbone of the blockchain, and developers known as Core who uphold bitcoins bug-free software. While both sides have incentives to reach a consensus, bitcoins lack of central authority has made reaching agreement difficult.

SegWit2x was formally released over the weekend and has already gained adoption by large miners Antpool, BTCC and Bixin. About 55 percent of blocks mined in the last 24 hours were done with SegWit2x, according to coin.dance, which monitors blockchain activity.

If support reaches 80 percent and maintains that threshold from more than two days, it will move bitcoin closer to avoiding a split.

Traders are excited by the prospect of a resolution to the scaling debate, which is why the price has rallied, said Thomas Glucksmann, head of marketing at Hong Kong-based bitcoin exchange Gatecoin.

Read more about bitcoins civil war.

Despite the progress with SegWit2x, some warned that bitcoin isnt out of the woods yet. Many Core members still vehemently oppose the software, which they say hasnt been properly vetted for bugs. Also, not all miners support SegWit2x, which they say is a flawed compromise that doesnt solve the root scaling problem.

This price rally is a bounce, we are very bearish in the near term for a number of reasons, said Harry Yeh, managing partner at digital currency dealer Binary Financial, who cites the lack of support from Core developers as one of his biggest worries. Anytime the price rockets up quickly, it will be followed by a strong correction which we are starting to see. We are definitely headed for some turbulent and volatile times in the short term.

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Bitcoin Jumps as Miners Take First Step to Avoid Currency Split - Bloomberg

In just a few short days, the BTC-USD price dropped nearly $700 in value in a move that consequently managed to drop the entire crypto-market by almost 25 percent:

Figure 1: BTC-USD Market Cap

Leading up to this weekends drop in BTC-USD price, several previous BTC-USD market breakdowns (click here and here for details) tracked the progress of a massive Head and Shoulders Pattern. The estimated price target of the Head and Shoulders pattern left the previous market value of $2,400 poised to drop steeply to $1,800. If you are reading this article, you are probably wondering what the heck just happened and if the carnage is going to continue ...

First, lets take a look at how the market reacted to the completion of this Head and Shoulders pattern and then extrapolate what that may mean for the overall trend of BTC-USD. The figure below shows the key support levels that were broken during the fall this weekend:

Figure 2: BTC-USD, 6-hr Candles, GDAX, Head and Shoulders Key Support Levels

After the initial breakout of the Head and Shoulders, the price took a steep plunge downward. Ultimately, after several days of a strong bear market (and several significant support levels broken), we reached our price target of $1,800 before bouncing and beginning the process of retesting crucial support (now turned resistance) levels:

Figure 3: BTC-USD, 6-hr Candles, GDAX, Broken Support Levels

With very little effort, the BTC-USD market managed to reach its price target and appears to be making a recovery but is this a fake-out? Are we bouncing back to our previous trend? Not likely. Below are some of the more glaring reasons why I think this bear still has some bite left in it.

On the higher timescales, BTC-USD is actually showing strength in downward momentum of this move. No MACD divergence (loss in market momentum) is visible. The lack of macro-trend divergence indicates that the market still has plenty of downward pull left in it before it strongly begins to resist the lower prices.

Figure 4: BTC-USD, 12-hr Candles, GDAX, No Divergence

On a smaller, one-hour scale, the market is strongly diverging in a bearish fashion. Although the market had a decent rebound off the bottom of the recent run, it is quickly losing steam (indicated by the divergence shown on the 1-hr MACD and labeled in pink). Not only is it diverging on the 1-hr MACD, across the length of the bear run, the market doesnt seem comfortable maintaining the downward momentum across multiple bearish/bullish periods (shown in yellow):

Figure 5: BTC-USD, 1-hr Candles, GDAX, 1HR Bearish Divergence

Its nearly impossible to predict the true bottom of a sustained bear or bull market, so it is very important to keep an eye on the market and constantly update your perspective. At the moment, there are several indicators that BTC-USD has a sustained bear market in its future. And, as weve seen over the course of several weeks: what brings Bitcoin down brings everyone down.

The Head and Shoulders pattern predicted in previous articles completed its price target of $1,800.

There are multiple signs that the BTC-USD bear market still has downward momentum left in it.

Trading and investing in digital assets like bitcoin and ether is highly speculative and comes with many risks. This analysis is for informational purposes and should not be considered investment advice. Statements and financial information on Bitcoin Magazine and BTC Media related sites do not necessarily reflect the opinion of BTC Media and should not be construed as an endorsement or recommendation to buy, sell or hold. Past performance is not necessarily indicative of future results.

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Bitcoin Price Analysis: This Bear Still Has Some Bite Left in It - Bitcoin Magazine

It seems July 17 has initiated the beginning steps towards Segwit2x activation as the code has been released and miners who supported the New York Agreement (NYA) have started running the new BTC1 software.

Also read:A Brief Glimpse Into the Lives of Chinese Bitcoin Miners

As the price of bitcoin dropped to new lows this weekend, some bitcoin proponents were patiently waiting for the promised BTC1 software. Now it seems in a short period of time the bitcoin community may see the protocol Segregated Witness (Segwit) activated as the mining community has begun to signalBIP91. The proposal BIP91 is a combination of Segwit2x and BIP148. The version 1.14.4code has been pushed to the repository by the Segwit2x working group, and a few mining pools have already started running the protocol. The China-based Bitmain technologies announced their support via Twitter by stating;

All of our bitcoin mining pools will start running the new Segwit2x software today

Other mining pools signaling and mining BIP91 blocks include Bixin, Antpool, BTC.com, Bitfury, and Bitclub so far. Now spectators are waiting for other pools like BTCC, F2pool, Slush, and a few others to join. Back in June Bitcoin.com reported on how a vast majority of the hashrate was signaling their initial support for Segwit2x. Miners running the new BTC1 software and currently signaling BIP91 means that if enough hashrate reaches over 80 percent and continues for a 336 block period, Segwit will lock in. If all is successful, this will then lead to another 336 block period that will activate the Segwit protocol on the main chain.

Its still a bit early and hard to gauge the overall sentiment of bitcoiners, but there are definitely a lot of individuals on forums and social media who support the Segwit2x plan. For instance, Fred Wilson, managing partner at Union Square Ventures revealed he favored Segwit2x adoption on July 17 via the investors blog.

I am for the Segwit2x proposal and hope that we see it broadly adopted later this month, explains Wilson. There is a chance that doesnt happen, and a user activated soft fork (UASF) could be used to force Segwit into the market. I personally hope that a user activated soft fork doesnt happen as it would create a lot of turbulence.

Rootstock Chief Scientist, Sergio Demian Lerner also states his opinion of the Segwit2x compromise revealing he doesnt believe the intention is to fire core programmers, which is one of the conspiracies that has been spread around the community.

In my humble opinion the New York Agreement wanted to start from Bitcoin Core 0.14 because the group wants core to keep leading Bitcoin, explains the Rootstock developer and initial creator of the Segwit2x proposal.

It doesnt try to be the next core If NYA intention was to dump Core, they would have started from BU or Bitcoin Classic or they would have removed the witness discount

Further Sergio Demian Lerner details that he knows Segwit isnt perfect but he doesnt think perfection is obtainable anyway.

I audited Segwit in 2016. Found problems. Code far from perfect. HOWEVER I DO support Segwit because I dont believe in perfection, says the Rootstock engineer. You have to know the actual code in detail to say you know Segwit. Thats the problem with Segwit. Thats a community fault.

There are still those who vehemently disagree with the progression of BTC1 and are showing sole support for either UASF or UAHF,vowing never to compromise. However, gauging sentiment viaTwitter or Reddit forums is a horrible metric, and the only things that matters now in this debateare the actions from the networks participants, rather than mere internet chatter.

People are also discussing the next step of the Segwit2x plan after the Segregated Witness protocol is implemented, which is the 2MB hard fork. The hard fork subject is also a contentious topic, and people are wondering if NYA participants will still support the hard fork after Segwit gets implemented. If Segwit2x continues to be agreed upon then exactly 12,960 blocks (~3 months) after Segwit activates The hard fork will commence.

Now if mining pools continue to do what they agreed upon in regards to the NYA plan and other miners join in then the implementation of Segwit will likely happen soon.

What do you think about Segwit2x? Are you in favor of this compromise? Let us know in the comments below.

Images via Shutterstock, XBT.eu, and Bitcoin.com.

Do you want to vote on important Bitcoin issues? Bitcoin.com has acquired Bitcoinocracy, and rebranded the project to Vote.bitcoin.com. Users simply sign a statement with a non-empty Bitcoin address and express their opinions. The project focuses on determining truth backed by monetary value and transparency.

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The Bitcoin Scaling Countdown: Miners Begin Running Segwit2x Software - Bitcoin News (press release)

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Bitcoin Takes Weekend Slide Wall Street Journal (subscription) The price of the digital currency bitcoin fell over the weekend, dropping below $2,000 and farther away from its June highs, part of a broad selloff in dozens of cryptocurrencies, including ether. Bitcoin on Sunday traded as low as $1,836, according to ... Ethereum briefly crashes 20% to 7-week low amid worries about rival bitcoin's futureCNBC Bitcoin Crashes as Chain-Split Risks IncreaseCryptoCoinsNews Cryptocurrency Market Drops to Near 50% Decline From All-Time HighCoinDesk Inside Bitcoins -Bitcoin Magazine -Motley Fool Australia all 79 news articles »

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Bitcoin Takes Weekend Slide - Wall Street Journal (subscription)

Bitcoin mining has grown into a vast economy over the past few years as large ASIC-powered mining farms process transactions for the $32 billion dollar market. In the early days, people could mine bitcoins using their central processing units (CPU) and they still can, but the undertaking is extremely inefficient. However, a few people still mess around mining bitcoins using older computers and retro devices merely for the fun of it and for experimentation purposes.

Also Read:Investment Funds That Offer Cryptocurrency Exposure See Big Gains

The bitcoin mining ecosystem is a competitive environment of pools processing transactions while simultaneously securing the network. Miners run special software and use application-specific integrated circuitry (ASIC) to mine bitcoins these days, using chips far more efficient than your standard CPU. Currently, older computers can mine bitcoins at a prolonged rate, but its still pretty cool to see if a classic system can perform the task of bitcoin mining.

One bitcoin enthusiast has done just that a few times with older computers. Ken Shirriff is well-known in the bitcoin community for his work on getting the bitcoin symbol added to Unicode. Shirriff also has a popular blog where writes about his projects and how he has mined bitcoins using classic devices from the past. Just recently Shirriff has been working on a Xerox Alto restoration and managed to get the seventies built computer to mine bitcoins at 1.5 hashes/second. The Xerox Alto is a well-known computer classic that was the first device to support a graphical user interface (GUI) in 1973.

Ive been restoring a Xerox Alto minicomputer from the 1970s and figured it would be interesting to see if it could mine bitcoins, explains Shirriff.

I coded up the necessary hash algorithm in BCPL (the old programming language used by the Alto) and found that although the mining algorithm ran, the Alto was so slow that it would take many times the lifetime of the universe to successfully mine bitcoins.

The computers 1.5 blocks per second is significantly slower than the chips used today. Shirriff details the Xerox Altos speed would take 5000 times the age of the universe to mine one block. For demonstration purposes, Shirriff used the input of a successfully mined block to see if the algorithm succeeded. Shirriffs code is available on Github for those who would like to try out Xerox Alto mining.

Another project Shirriff worked on back in 2015 was mining with a 55-year-old IBM 1401 mainframe at 80 seconds per hash. This computer was the best-selling computer of the mid-1960sand mainly used for business purposes.

While modern hardware can compute billions of hashes per second, the 1401 takes 80 seconds to compute a single hash, details Shirriff. This illustrates the improvement of computer performance in the past decades, most famously described by Moores Law To summarize, to mine a block at current difficulty, the IBM 1401 would take about 510^14 years (about 40,000 times the current age of the universe).

Lastly, another neat project is another incredibly slow miner built in 2013 out of a 1985 Nintendo Entertainment System (NES). The creator of the NES mining system was joking around with his friend about mining bitcoins with an 8-bit game console. Well, he took that as a challenge and built a Nintendo that communicated with the network and performed SHA256 hashing. For other portions of the project, he did need a Raspberry Pi for computing that did not take place on the NES.

SHA256 hashing uses many 32-bit operations, and the 6502 in the NES is an 8-bit CPU, explains the retro miner creator. Initially I thought this would be a significant challenge, but with some modifications, I got an open implementation of SHA256 to compile to a 6502 target using the cc65 compiler.

The Raspberry Pi gets a chunk of data, compiles it into a ROM that includes the SHA256 algo and current target data, and sends it to the console via USB CopyNES. Each ROM computes and tests a single hash.

In the end, the NES miner worked and started searching for blocks with Slushs pool, but the creator said there was plenty of room for build improvements. What Im doing now is very slow, and I admit, pretty lame, explains the retro miners blog post. Additionally, bitcoiners have had great discussions concerning mining bitcoin with other gaming consoles like the Playstation 3.

Obviously, these types of projects wont be mass adopted to mine excessive amounts of bitcoins like ASICs because it would take many lifetimes to find one block using a retro device. However even though watching an older computer or gaming console mine bitcoins is super slow its very interesting to see that these devices are compatible with the Bitcoin network.

What do you think about people testing old computers and retro gaming devices with the Bitcoin network? Let us know what you think in the comments below.

Images via Pixabay, Wiki Commons, and Ken Shirriffs blog.

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Mining Bitcoin Using Old Computers and Retro Gaming Consoles - Bitcoin News (press release)

Ever wonder what its like to work at a bitcoin mining farm in China? Just recently two reports revealed the inner workings of Chinese bitcoin mines operating in the countrys Sichuan prvince.

Also read:Japans Cryptocurrency Business Association Plans for August 1 Guidelines

Last week on July 11, Chinas Central Television (CCTV-2) channel aired a special documentary on bitcoin mining operations located in Kangding county in the southwest region of the country. The channels news reporter drives to a desolate mountainous area in Sichuan to visit a three-story mining data center. Each floor is filled with mining rigs housed on metal racks and surrounded by massive fans. CCTV also interviews Wang, the young data center owner in his twenties who runs five mining sites in the area. According to a translation from the local publication, 8btc, Wang says he runs a medium sized data center that can grow bigger. The twenty-year-old native says the operation mines 16 BTC (US$30,000) a day.

We are a middle-sized mining factory with 5000 bitcoin miners, explains Wang. We still have room to run another 5000 mining machines.

Wang and the data centers operations manager Xu says lots of people are choosing to set up mining sites in Xinjiang, Sichuan, Yunnan, and Inner Mongolia. The reason for this is cheaper electricity from hydropower stations located in the mountains. Wang details that typically electricity in China is 0.7 yuan per KwH, but by partnering with neighboring hydropower stations mining facilities are paying 0.3 yuan per KwH (about 0.045 USD at the time of writing).

[Electricity] is directly transmitted from nearby hydropower stations, Wang tells the CCTV journalist. This is mainly why we set up the site here. Bitcoin mining is electricity-consuming and 50 percent of our profits go to the electricity bill.

The price is the outcome of our negotiation with the hydropower station. Put simply, we made a deal with them and give them part of our profits. They provide electricity, we provide machines, and we share the profits. Its win-win.

According to CCTVs broadcast, an executive at the Sichuan Electric Power Company says that these mining sites are not supposed to partner with hydropower stations. The sites have been investigated he says, but nothing materialized from the local government inspection. Furthermore, Wang says he doesnt pay taxes for his bitcoin revenue.

Why should I?We are mining bitcoin, its all about computational power. Its like playing games. Why should we pay taxes for playing games?

Another report from the Chinese photographer Liu Xingzhe covers the interesting world of Chinese bitcoin mines. Lius photographs show workers at data centers in another area located in the Sichuan prvince living in dormitories and taking care of machines for weeks on end. Many of the workers travel from other towns and hitchhike to the remote mountainous region to make a better salary than most local jobs.

Miners at Luis farm work during all hours of the day and eveningreassembling calculatin bards and fixing malfunctioning machines in the middle of the night. Lui tells the publication he has moved his mining operation from Henan to Sichuan to leverage the cheaper electricity in the region. Additionally, Lui details that he manages roughly 7,000 mining rigs for clients located in China.

One of the bitcoin mine workers explains that the nearest town is roughly 20 miles away and there is nowhere to spend money near the facilities. he gd thing is, there isnt anywhere t spend mney, s yu can save yur whle salary, ne miner tld the photographer Liu ingzhe.

What do you think about the Chinese bitcoin mining operations? Let us know in the comments below.

Images via Shutterstock,Liu ingzhe, CCTV, and 8btc.

Do you want to vote on important Bitcoin issues? Bitcoin.com has acquired Bitcoinocracy, and rebranded the project to Vote.bitcoin.com. Users simply sign a statement with a non-empty Bitcoin address and express their opinions. The project focuses on determining truth backed by monetary value and transparency.

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A Brief Glimpse Into the Lives of Chinese Bitcoin Miners - Bitcoin News (press release)

The first week with Breadwallets Bitcoin Therapy Hotline exceeded all expectations, announced Breadwallet CMO Aaron Lasher. He did not know what to expect when launching the hotline, according to bitcoin.coms previous interview, butknew there had been a lot of negativity and vitriol permeating the ecosystem. He just wanted to find a way to inject some optimism. That was the ultimate purpose of the hotline, even if it was not touted as 100% serious. It was not a joke either, though.

Also read:Central Bank of Albania Lists Five Most Important Bitcoin Risks in Public Warning

Lasher outlined many highlights about the hotlines performance. He saidquite a few old friends called to catch up or chat. He had many callers who harbored concerns about the blocksize debate and what would happen to their bitcoin. Some of them even appeared to need moral support as a result of bitcoins current bear market trend.

Some just called to request new features for breadwallets nativeapplication. They were interested in new services and promoted manypossible ideas. Lasher said he accepted these calls with humility, saying it may directly alter Breadwallets road map.

He said the hotline also received calls after hours, especially on the weekends. This acted as a testament to the popularity of the hotline. Many of the callers also left a voicemail. Lasher mentioned 20% of the callers were women. This was good news for him, because it suggested the bitcoin community has diversified.

The most shocking revelation of the Hotline for Lasher was the fact he received zero prank calls. Not a single person called just to get a quick laugh and waste time. That appears like it bodes well for the entire community. Lasher elaborated and provided a graph of the calls:

Of all the calls we received, we did not get a single prank call. Frankly this was the most shocking revelation of all, considering it was our biggest fear that people with too much time on their hands would abuse the line for a cheap laugh. But we had zero, nada, zilch. Faith in humanity restored. For those who are interested, below is a distribution of the types of calls we received:

Thenumber to the hotline is still posted on Breadwalletsblog. It is:+1-305-791-491 (Open weekdays 10a-5p EST),

Have you also calledthe Bitcoin Therapy Hotline? Let us know in the comments section below.

Images courtesy of bitcoinwiki.com, Breadwallet, andwhichwallet.com

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Breadwallet's Bitcoin Therapy Hotline Exceeds Expectations ... - Bitcoin News (press release)

Bitcoin Magazine

Bitcoin Miners Miss the First BIP 148 Deadline Bitcoin Magazine As Bitcoin's scaling dispute appears to be heading for a climax, the next couple of weeks could prove pivotal. One scaling solution in particular, Bitcoin Improvement Proposal 148 (BIP 148), is scheduled to trigger activation of Segregated Witness ... and more »

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Bitcoin Miners Miss the First BIP 148 Deadline - Bitcoin Magazine