The death of Bitcoin and why it is going to live a long and happy life

You may have heard that Bitcoin is dead. Well, it’s been called that for 89th time now and yet it’s still standing and growing immensely. Just a few days ago there was another record in the volume of transactions in the network and the number of people using this digital currency keeps on rising with each day. So why did Bitcoin die this time?

There is a very important and heated debate about the future of Bitcoin and the path it should follow to keep growing and stay afloat. It’s fighting the paradox of its popularity the more people start to use Bitcoin the weaker it gets. It’s a design flaw that should be fixed right away, but there is no easy solution to do so. This is where the discussion should start.

Not doing anything can lead to:

• higher transactions fees;
• longer transaction confirmation times;
• huge dive in price;
• slower adoption of the currency;
• another “death of Bitcoin”.

Meaning that Bitcoin will become a nerd oriented experiment and a currency used by no one. On the other hand, doing something that a considerable part of the community is not okay with, may lead to separation into “camps” and creation of alternative coins (altcoins). To some extent, we can observe it right now in the form of Bitcoin Classic, Bitcoin XT and the group that wants to stick with the unchanged core.

In all that fuss, one of the key Bitcoin developers Mike Hearn decided to leave the project and announced to the whole world that the currency is actually a big fail and he believes it has no future. The community and media started expressing their opinions, fear or even predicting the end and the price plummeted instantly. It went from around $430 to $360 and this is the moment Bitcoin “died”. No one really cared that it went back up to above $400 just 6 days later and continues to hold this value. Bitcoin is dead and “that’s all folks” for media until something more exciting happens.

Meanwhile in the community, the discussion often referred to as the Civil War, is starting to cool down a little. The communication between the groups is better and it seems like we are starting to come up with some solutions that will satisfy most of the interested parties. Is Bitcoin dead? Yes, for the 89th time but it looks like it has way more lives than that.