Bitcoin has experienced a rise in anticipation of a possible chain split in November, driving all other coins down.

Next month, Bitcoin is set to enact a 2mb block size increase via hard fork, dubbed Segwit2x. Despite a current 95% of the network hashrate signalling support for the update, it is nonetheless contentious, mostly due to is opposition from Bitcoin Core, which until now has developed all protocol upgrades. There is particular contention over the naming of each respective chain:

The markets have responded by elevating Bitcoin with a nice price bump, up to $4,842 from $4,260 last week. The rest of the market took a sharp plunge over the last few days, quickly dropping from a combined value of $75 billion down to $70 billion, now up past $73 billion again. This has led to a rise in Bitcoin’s market dominance from 49% to 52% over the last week. Dash took a tumble from about $313 last week to a recent low of $272 on Monday, now up to $286.

Bitcoin grab in anticipation of “free money” round two from a chain split

The rise in demand for Bitcoin can be attributed to probability of an upcoming chain split, which would result in holders of Bitcoin receiving an equal number of tokens on the new chain, similar to what happened in August with the Bitcoin Cash split. Already, Bitfinex is selling futures for the two potential forks of Bitcoin:

“Free money” mania causing Bitcoin to rise ahead of no technological improvements has riled fans of other coins such as Ethereum for drawing market attention away from serious development.

Dash recedes following diffused conference announcements

Prior to the recent decline due to Bitcoin’s anticipated chain split, Dash came off a recent high following the London conference. In the lead up to and during the conference, the price rose to $355 in anticipation of a major announcement. The announcements were more allusions to future announcements than concrete, and the market responded to a dip down to $291 followed by a recovery to $313 before the recent second drop.

Several announcements and potential news items remain on the road ahead which were alluded to during the conference. Wirex, which presented in London and vaguely mentioned some Dash collaboration, announced recently that it would fully integrate Dash into its platform and upcoming contactless cards, potentially opening up new markets, including Japan. Integrations into a host of new exchanges were also mentioned, including on ramps to over 20 different fiat currencies, which remain to be announced, as well as a global brokerage service with free bank transfers, a new ATM manufacturer, and an application for buying from many large retailers at a discount. Finally, two major updates to Dash, 12.2 (which will include a block size increase) and 12.3, are expected by the year’s end before next year’s rollout of the ambitious 13.0 update.