It was nothing short of a nightmare - transaction costs upwards of $30 mixed with insanely slow transaction times, making Bitcoin impractical to use as a method of transferring funds.

The issues caused massive divide within Bitcoin communities - sparking the "store of value" debate, which had many saying Bitcoin was now like gold - not to be used in everyday transactions, but rather a place to store funds - a debate that sparked the birth of the controversial Bitcoin Cash.

But now, those fees are dropping, and fast.

Bitcoin fees lowest they've been since October 2017.

Why the drop? Reasons are mixed. There are less transactions overall from it's peak, but largely there has been some efficiency changes as well. A previously rarely used feature of Bitcoin was the ability to send BTC to multiple recipients packaged into 1 transaction.  When fees were low, the feature was rarely used, but it's being used much more today.

However - as Bitcoin's price continues to rebound, it's expected that transaction volume will as well, especially with low fees back in play - which could just bog down the network again, and send transaction costs right back up.

Solutions? SegWit2x increasing the block size, and lightening network are both on the table and gaining support.

The challenge? Implementation. Even after an agreement on a solution is reached, technical analysts believe SegWit2x could take months to be fully adopted.  Lightening Network - even longer, perhaps years due to the drastic complete overhaul in transaction protocol.

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Author: Oliver Redding
Seattle News Desk

Bitcoin dipped down to $6,422 shortly today, and is already on it's way back up as people take this chance to "buy the dip" (buy more bitcoin while the price is lower than usual).

Now, to anyone who's been in the cyrptocurency space for awhile, today's news hasn't meant much except an opportunity to buy more at a lower price. The real pro's sold around $7500 immediately following the news the SegWit2x fork isn't happening - and are buying back today for $1000 less and making some great profits.

But if you're a part of any facebook groups, reddits, or following related hastags on twitter - newbie investors are clearly in a panic, and there's a lot of them.

So let's just go over how simple it is to understand today's price movements:

- Next week was supposed to be a Bitcoin fork. 

- If you owned lets say 3 BTC, you'd then receive 3 of this new currency called B2X, totally free.

- People for the last few weeks were buying more Bitcoin just for that reason, to get the free coins. 

- That's canceled. So people are pulling back out. 

- So, price just goes back to where it was before all that.

It's all a lot less exciting when you understand, right?

Don't get me wrong, i'm glad so many new people are taking part in the cyrptocurrency space - in fact, I love it, and i'm glad you're all here.

But after reading through countless meltdowns on social media today one thing is clear - some of you new investors need thicker skin. 

These days happen, always have, and always will.

Keep calm, relax, and hold (or HODL).

News is breaking late tonight following an e-mail sent out to the Segwit2x e-mail list.

A developer going by "bitpico" says the fork is still on, backed with a 30% hash rate.  The e-mail reads as follows:

We are carrying out the fork regardless as everything is set in motion. Backing down the difficulty right now is a strategy. Wonder why 30% network hash-rate disappeared?  It’s ours; the miners that will continue what is set in motion... A handful of humans cannot stop what they have no control over...- Sent from my Space Ship

We found a user who appears to be the same person on the forums at BitcoinTalk.org, posting similar messages:

Majority miners never claimed to have backed out of SegWit2x. It is not cancelled nor can it be...
and...
A handful of people cannot "call off" a hard fork. The miners decide...

Still unclear how legitimate his claims are.  If this is one disappointed Segwit2x fan, or someone really speaking for a large pool of miners.

Also surprising - Segwit2x futures are also slowly rising late tonight to $350 after reaching a low of $146 earlier today.

Most importantly though - the concerns around Segwit2x was it's bold goal to replace Bitcoin, that issue is closed for now, and needless to say even if these miners statements are true - at best with this 'no consensus needed' attitude they're just creating an altcoin.

Most people aren't even aware that investments in Bitcoin SegWit2 had already started.

On October 17th HitBTC proudly announced they were giving their users an advance access to the market:

"B2X token markets are open on HitBTC! Trade B2X with BTC, ETH and USDT.
B2X is not available for deposits and withdrawals, because SegWit2x is not activated yet.
The original BTC ticker remains with the original Bitcoin."

They wrote in a blog post.

Now, with their money locked in and untradeable - SegWit2 futures are in a nose dive following today's announcement that Bitcoin SegWit2 is canceled for the time being.  Down 85% at the time of publishing this article.

SegWit2x futures today.

That's the risk you take when you buy something doesn't yet exist.
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The Bitcoin SegWit2x fork was just a week away, but behind the scene things were going very very wrong.

In an e-mail sent today, the SegWit2x developers stated:

"Unfortunately, it is clear that we have not built sufficient consensus for a clean blocksize upgrade at this time. Continuing on the current path could divide the community and be a setback to Bitcoin's growth. This was never the goal of Segwit2x. Until then, we are suspending our plans for the upcoming 2MB upgrade."

But for those who have been following along, it was a long road leading to this point.

Infact, developers supporting the fork have been dropping off for months.  Industry leaders even formed an alliance on twitter adding "NOX2" next to their names to show their disapproval.

With fears of the Bitcoin community being split put to rest, prices shot up today setting a new all time high of $7,888.

But it may not be over with yet, and Segwit2x could still resurface, and still has a chance to succeed.

There are legitimate reasons for a larger blocksize to increase Bitcoin's transaction capacity. But with no replay protection (which would cause people to accidentally send double payments with every transaction, sending both bitcoin and the new Bitcoin SegWit2x at once) now just didn't seem to be the right time.