The month of November has been fairly shaky for digital currencies, hence bringing in high volatility for Bitcoin and other coins. Following the decrease in value to roughly $5,500, bitcoin has quickly managed to regain its value, and even hit a new all-time high, hence surpassing the $8,000 threshold for the first time ever. At the moment of writing, the digital currency is trading at approximately $8,200.

On the 12th of November, the bitcoin price fell to around $5,500 after the SegWit2X hard fork plans were cancelled. The reasons behind this include general lack of consensus, supporters backing out, and bugs in the code. Following the failure of implementing SegWit2x, and splitting the bitcoin network into two separate coins, many of the SegWit believers decided to invest their money into Bitcoin Cash, thus causing a massive value spike for it.

During the last couple of months, Bitcoin has gone through a two different hard forks, and the creation of two additional and separate digital currencies – bitcoin cash and bitcoin gold. Now, the deadline is quickly approaching for another hard fork, and this will likely have larger implications for the network.

The plan to introduce SegWit2x has been around since May, and has quickly gained favour with numerous mining pools and bitcoin start-ups. While the number of those supporting the hard fork has changed over the last few months, we’ll attempt to explain what this protocol change wishes to achieve, and the means of doing so.