Bitcoin remains a thriving cryptocurrency, but its reputation as a cool, futuristic currency for savvy individuals may have just received a mortal blow. Along with a sampling of dinosaurs, shushing emoji, and many more, the Unicode Consortiums 10.0 version of the Unicode Standard also includes the Bitcoin symbol.

The timely addition wont appear as a traditional bubble-like emoji, but rather a regular Unicode character, the currencys B-like symbol. Unicode 10.0 is dropping today, though the long delay for Bitcoins arrival its been around for almost a decade now could be due to the process for proposing new emoji and icons to the Unicode Standard. Still, its arguably the most mainstream Bitcoin has ever been: its no longer so unknown that your parents couldnt pop off a quick reference to it in the same text about siblings or your family pet.

Unicode 10.0 is expected to add 56 new emoji, 8,518 characters, and four new scripts. For a complete breakdown with images, check out Emojipedia.

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Your mom will soon be able to text the Bitcoin symbol, along with a bunch of new emoji - The Verge

Do keep in mind Bitcoin network congestion can occur at any given time.

Over the past few months, we have seen multiple issues affect the Bitcoin network. More specifically, network congestion has been a massive problem so far. Interestingly enough, it appears the Bitcoin transaction mempool is nearly empty right now. Not too long ago, we had around 200,00 unconfirmed transactions stuck in limbo for several days. With the end of the scaling debate nearing, it seems things are finally returning back to normal.

The Bitcoin mempool has always been an intriguing topic of discussion. On multiple occasions, we have seen the number of unconfirmed transactions spike by quite a margin Not too long ago, this number was hovering around the 200,000 mark. A lot of users had to wait several hours, if not days until their transfer was confirmed by the network. It is not an ideal situation by any means.

Moreover, network congestion causes the transaction fees to rise. Paying several dollars to move Bitcoin on the network is not acceptable. The many potential scaling solutions should help in alleviating those concerns. However, it has taken the community a very long time to come to a decision regarding these scaling proposals. It is curious how the mempool is virtually empty around the time two different scaling solutions are set to activate on the network over the next few weeks.

No one will complain about the Bitcoin mempool being rather empty, though. Less unconfirmed transactions means users pay lower fees to move money around. Right now, these fees are slowly returning back to normal. Once the new scaling solutions activate on the network, these costs will be reduced even more. Seeing this happen prior to Bitcoineffectively scaling is still quite remarkable, to say the least.

Do keep in mind Bitcoin network congestion can occur at any given time. It is even the person or group responsible for spamming the network ceased activity for the time being. Then again, we have seen such attacks pop up out of nowhere at random intervals. It is evident some people want to hurt Bitcoin in every way possible.Creating a transaction backlog is one way of doing so. It is also worth noting the network is now processing 2.44 transactions per second. That is a very low number, although one that will undoubtedly increase over the next few years.

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Bitcoin Mempool is Virtually Empty as Community Anticipates Scaling Resolution - newsBTC

Bitcoin slid to its lowest for the month on Thursday amid a broader sell-off in digital currencies.

Bitcoin briefly dropped more than 12 percent to $2,185.96 Thursday, its lowest since May 31 when it hit a low of $2,162.23, according to CoinDesk. The digital currency recovered to near $2,366 early Thursday afternoon, little changed for June.

"Many investors seem to be using the very recent rally as an opportunity to take some profits while they evaluate the market after the largest spike in price, volume and interest that we have ever seen," said Alex Sunnarborg, research analyst at CoinDesk.

The move highlights the volatile swings by digital currencies bitcoin remains more than 100 percent higher year to date.

Meanwhile, the global market value of digital currencies fell from a record of $117.21 billion on Monday to below $100 billion Thursday, according to CoinMarketCap.

Bitcoin 30-day performance

Source: CoinDesk

The cryptocurrency world started the week strong with bitcoin topping $3,000 for the first time Sunday, more than tripling for the year, and a record-breaking fund raise Monday of about $153 million for a new digital currency called Bancor. Another digital currency called IOTA launched on the Bitfinex exchange Tuesday with a record market capitalization of more than $1.5 billion.

However, the enthusiasm for the often volatile cryptocurrencies also attracted cyberattacks on at least two major exchanges and temporarily overwhelmed another exchange's website with high customer demand.

Bitcoin's rise over the weekend was also helped by demand from major Chinese exchanges. They announced around the beginning of June they would resume bitcoin withdrawals after a roughly four-month halt amid scrutiny from the People's Bank of China. Chinese yuan-based bitcoin trade dropped from dominating global trade volume to less than 10 percent of all trade.

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Bitcoin tumbles 12%, erases gains for June - CNBC.com - CNBC

Bitcoin quickly bounced back from the lows of June, amid improved sentiment about the future of the digital currency.

Bitcoin traded higher Saturday near $2,680, up more than 20 percent from a June low of $2,185.96 hit Thursday that had erased gains for the month, according to CoinDesk.

Worries about overexuberance in digital currencies overall and heated debate among developers about how to upgrade bitcoin's technology weighed on its price.

"A proposal was accepted to merge the two upgrade methods, making them compatible," Brian Kelly, a CNBC contributor and founder of BKCM, which runs a digital assets strategy, said Friday. "So we have seen a relief rally on this progress."

Kelly added that the latest development "reduces the threat of a coin split, but we are not out of the woods yet. The miners still need to agree to this merged upgrade."

Bitcoin one-week performance

Source: CoinDesk

The rest is here:
In relief rally, bitcoin jumps more than 20% from June low - CNBC

Before we get started, let me try and define some very important terms, which I hope will make it easier for me to fully convey what exactly is going to happen on August 1st.

Hard Fork - A hard fork is a permanent divergence in the blockchain, that occurs when non-upgraded nodes can't validate blocks created by upgraded nodes that follow newer block validation rules. This can be caused by a change in a blockchain's protocol that makes previously invalid blocks/transactions valid, and as such requires all nodes or users to upgrade to the latest version of the protocol software. This essentially creates a fork in the blockchain, one path which follows the new, upgraded blockchain, and one path which continues along the old path. Generally, after a short period of time, those on the old chain will realize that their version of the blockchain is outdated or irrelevant and quickly upgrade to the latest version.

Soft Fork - A soft fork is a change to the bitcoin protocol where some previously valid blocks/transactions are made invalid, and the rest of the previously valid blocks/transactions are kept valid. Old nodes will still recognize the new blocks as valid. Soft forks don't require any nodes to upgrade since all blocks with the new soft-forked rules also follow the old rules, therefore old clients accept them. This kind of fork requires only a majority of the miners to upgrade in order to enforce the new rules.

(Image Source: Bitcoin.org)

User Activated Soft Fork (UASF) - A UASF is a soft fork activated on a specified date, enforced by node enforcement instead of miner signaling. The idea is to have the economic majority, businesses and users (not miners) choose whether or not to activate this soft fork within their Bitcoin software client. On the proposed time, clients that have activated the soft fork will only accept blocks mined from miners that have also updated to start signaling for the soft fork, and will reject blocks that were created from miners that had not updated. Clients that have not updated to activate the soft fork will accept blocks mined from both miners that have updated and miners that have not updated.

By the specified date, miners are then given an opportunity to make a choice of their own, based on how much of the economic majority has activated the soft fork. If the economic majority upgrades, then miners have an economic incentive to update, as not following along would make it more difficult to sell coins mined after the chosen date, as the blocks would not be accepted by the economic majority. Essentially, miners on the old platform would be producing an altcoin not recognized by the majority of users and exchanges, making them less useful and in lower demand. Because of how the Bitcoin network only follows the longest blockchain, if a majority of hash power follows the soft fork, all nodes will follow the soft fork chain regardless of if they have updated or not, and the UASF is successful.

However, if the vast majority of the economic majority does not upgrade, then the UASF will have given miners no additional incentive to upgrade and thus miners will not update or they risk following fork rules that are or will surely be obsolete. And in fact, any of the economic majority that had upgraded now must roll back their clients to the old version, else they would be unable to spend their Bitcoin. Their updated clients would reject any blockchain that includes any non-upgraded blocks created past the specified date, so any transactions they attempt to make will be added to the soft forked blockchain which would be maintained by the soft forked nodes and miners (if there are any soft forked miners at all). This soft forked blockchain will undoubtedly remain shorter than the original blockchain containing the non-updated blocks. Thus, the soft forked blockchain will never be accepted by the non-updated clients, and the transactions of the updated clients will never be included in the original blockchain; the transactions from the updated clients will never go through.

In the unlikely case that neither side is the clear winner, this is where it gets messy. A chain split will occur, where two versions of the blockchain will emerge. All coins that existed prior to the chain split will exist on both chains. If the original "legacy" blockchain remains longer, any coins mined under the soft forked blockchain will be nonexistent according to the legacy chain, and will only exist on the soft forked chain. However, if the soft forked chain ever becomes one block longer than the original, "legacy" chain, all transactions on the legacy chain that occurred between the time of the split and the soft forked chain getting longer will be erased forever and replaced with those of the soft forked chain, at which point the soft forked blockchain will likely remain victorious.

I hope there remains no confusion over my definitions, especially so in my defining of a UASF. I will attempt to answer any questions in the comments in order to further clarify.

August 1st, and the Future of Bitcoin

Bitcoin Improvement Proposal 148 (or BIP148 for short) is a UASF that encourage users to push miners to upgrade to SegWit. SegWit, along with fixing third party transaction malleability allowing for sidechains to be developed, will also improve Bitcoin's scalability over both the short term and the long term, as the malleability fix will allow for the implementation of Lightning Network, a more permanent solution to Bitcoin's transaction speed bottleneck. As Bitcoin is a decentralized system, here's how SegWit is supposed to activate: In any consecutive chain of blocks that are 2016-blocks long, ending November 15th, 2017, 95% or more of mined blocks must signal that the miners are ready for SegWit. If that doesn't happen, SegWit activation dies. Once SegWit signaling meets the criteria, there's a 2016-block long "pause" where SegWit activation is pending, but voting no longer matters. After that point, the network will accept SegWit transactions and miners are expected to accept them into blocks.

BIP148 will activate on August 1st, 2017. All BIP148 does, is refuse to accept blocks that do not signal SegWit-ready after August 1st, 2017, either until SegWit activates or until the deadline of November 15th, 2017 hits. In so doing, it forces the existing activation mechanism to deploy SegWit. From that date on, miners that want their blocks to be accepted by nodes that have updated to BIP148 will be required to signal readiness for SegWit by switching to the creation of blocks with a new version, called 'bit 1'. After enough miners are mining 'bit 1' version blocks, enough so that 95% or more of mined blocks in any 2016-block chain are of the version 'bit 1', the above requirements for SegWit activation will be fulfilled. Then all SegWit ready nodes, which currently make up over 80% of the network, will activate and begin SegWit enforcement, and thus SegWit will have been successfully implemented into the Bitcoin Network.

(Image Source: uasf.co)

As a soft fork, BIP148 avoids having to force most users to upgrade their software. Also, the way BIP148 and SegWit are designed, once SegWit is activated, users who are not running BIP148 will still get the benefits of the activation of SegWit.

Possible Scenarios

A confrontation will happen on August 1st, but right now the exact outcome is unknown because the outcome will depend on the amount of support that miners give to the two sides. There are three possible outcomes:

BIP148 fails with very little economic majority support. BIP148 requires support from the economic majority, particularly exchanges and wallets. If this does not occur, users will not run BIP148 node software after August 1st so as to prevent a chain split. There are strong economic incentives in the Bitcoin system for nodes to cooperate and remain in consensus to prevent chain splits. If no nodes are running BIP148, then BIP148 has failed. Bitcoin goes on exactly as it did on July 31st. People who installed BIP148 nodes need to roll back their nodes to be able to spend their bitcoins. Everyone else is unaffected.

Neither side is the clear winner and the blockchain splits, where two versions of the blockchain emerge. This is the disaster scenario. All coins that existed prior to the chain split will exist on both chains. If there is a greater demand for the blocks produced by the BIP148 miners, then profit-driven miners would eventually flock to BIP148 chain and if the BIP148 chain ever becomes one block longer than the legacy chain, as in it accumulates the most proof of work, all transactions on the legacy chain that occurred between the time of the split and the BIP148 chain getting longer will be erased forever and replaced with those of the BIP148 chain. This is because both BIP148 nodes as well as legacy nodes would switch to the BIP148 blockchain, discarding the legacy chain. If 50% of the mining power goes to the BIP148, it will almost certainly become the only chain. Nobody will want to mine or transact on a chain where the mining reward and transactions can disappear at any moment forever. But unless and until this happens, there is always at least a theoretical risk that the legacy blockchain can be overtaken and be discarded like this. That chance should decrease as time goes on, but will realistically exist for hours, days, or maybe even longer. If the demand is less for the soft-fork chain, then both chains may co-exist indefinitely. BIP148 nodes will never acknowledge the legacy chain, so these nodes will not switch to the legacy blockchain regardless of which chain has more hash power. However, it is very risky to buy, accept or hold any of the BIP148 Bitcoin, too. Most importantly, there is no guarantee that BIP148 Bitcoin will continue to be used and thus the coin's long-term value is in contention.

Most likely, one of the first two scenarios will unfold, where BIP148 either succeeds triumphantly or fails definitively, and Bitcoin will go on as it were, for better or for worse. Yet despite the odds, however improbable, an investor must always consider the worst case scenario in his or her risk-reward evaluation and examine if taking on the according risk-reward is appropriate for the goals of his or her portfolio.

Disclosure: I am/we are long BTC.

I wrote this article myself, and it expresses my own opinions. I am not receiving compensation for it (other than from Seeking Alpha). I have no business relationship with any company whose stock is mentioned in this article.

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August 1st And The End Of Bitcoin? - Winklevoss Bitcoin Trust ETF ... - Seeking Alpha