It has been repeated many times over but the Bitcoin network has a big problem. The number of unconfirmed transactions on the network is still pretty high. In fact, it grows slightly worse every single day. Right now, over 200,000 transactions are in the queue. Moreover, Bitcoin Cash is far more profitable to mine right now. If miners were to jump ship, things would get disastrous for Bitcoin itself.
Bitcoin’s woes continue to grow worse every week. For nearly five full days now, the mempool has been getting hammered. There is still no indication of any spam attack, though. Instead, we only see the number of unconfirmed transactions go up every day. Late last week, that number was close to 150.000. Today, it increased by another 50,000 for some reason. With 15.56 transactions per second, things aren’t looking great. Especially now with the fees still being driven up as we speak.
Bitcoin Cash Surges as Bitcoin Falters
How all of this will be resolved, is anybody’s guess. For now, the hashrate still remains in favor of the world’s leading cryptocurrency. That situation may change soon, though. The Bitcoin Cash price is surging and the chain is more profitable to mine. It is evident some people will be enticed to move to this chain. When they do so en masse, things will get very messy for Bitcoin rather quickly. So far, that is not a problem yet, but things can change on a whim’s notice.
It is evident the lack of scaling hurts Bitcoin more than ever. It also creates an even bigger incentive for people to look into altcoins and even BCH. Although we have seen this problematic scenario nearly every two weeks, it seemingly grows worse every time. Even additional mining hardware on the network will not resolve this problem. There are too many transactions and not enough block space. An on-chain scaling capacity solution like Bitcoin Cash would be more than welcome at this time.
This development comes at a time during which the Bitcoin price is struggling a bit. We see a lot of negative pressure across all markets all day long. If people can’t move their funds quickly enough, this pressure will only intensify over time. It may trigger a massive sell-off, for all we know. Such a dip happened earlier today already, and it seems the new uptrend has been rejected as well. An interesting end of the year looms ahead for Bitcoin, to say the least.
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