Ethereum and altcoins rise as SegWit2x gets suspended

The cancellation of SegWit2x Bitcoin hard fork has had a major impact on the crypto industry. It resulted in a slight decline of about 4% in Bitcoin’s price, but gave other cryptocurrencies a chance to rise. The second largest altcoin by market capitalization, Ethereum, has also made a comeback. The coin has gone up by 12% in just the first week of this month and now has a market capitalization of over $31.1 billion.

The largest cryptocurrency, Bitcoin, has been breaking records and reaching new highs for the past few weeks, while other currencies watched from the sidelines. The cancelled hard fork was drawing investors towards Bitcoin and away from other digital currencies. Analysts believe that the SegWit2x fork that was scheduled for next week was a major reason for the coin’s boom. Although the fork had received much opposition, it did promise 'free money' for the investors as the result of a blockchain split.

Significant capital previously being invested in other currencies had gone into Bitcoin. Ethereum’s market share saw a major decline during this time, experiencing lows that hadn’t been touched by the currency since April. However, 80 of the top 100 cryptocurrencies are now seeing progress. The combined value of all digital currencies has risen by about $10 billion and the industry reached a new all-time high market capitalization of $205 billion.

Ethereum, which seemed to be stuck at the $300 mark, stood at $289 on November 2nd and then rose to $326 on November 9th. The recent surge in the coin’s price is also accompanied by an accidental code bug exploitation that happened around November 6th within the Ethereum network. Almost $300 million worth Ethereum funds have been frozen due to this hack.

The recent bug activation has left a number of multi-signature parity wallets locked, with no way to access them. Early reports state that a hard fork is the only way to make the locked funds accessible but a blockchain split is not favored by users at all. Parity has advised users to refrain from adding funds to the affected wallets until a solution is devised.

The South Korean currency, Won, makes up 15% of the entire trading volume of Ethereum. The country’s biggest digital currency exchange, Bithumb, revealed in May to be the largest Ethereum-to-fiat exchange within the global market, continues being the coin’s largest single market.