Investing.com – Bitcoin pared loses on Tuesday but remained under pressure as ongoing concerns about the future of bitcoin persisted following the suspension of the SegWit2x software upgrade last week.
On the U.S.-based Bitfinex exchange, bitcoin rose to $6,482.6, up $6.1, or 0.09% well below its recent high of $7895. Bitcoin's market cap was $109.26 billion.
Bitcoin recovered from a session low of $6,201 but failed to mount a sustainable rally to recent highs amid uncertainty over the future of bitcoin as the Segwit2x upgrade was aimed at speeding up transactions on the bitcoin network by increasing the size of “blocks” - files that store information on the network - from one megabyte to two megabytes (hence, the 2x).
With bitcoin’s block size set to remain limited to 1-megabyte – roughly seven transactions per second – many investors have turned to Bitcoin cash, betting that the bitcoin offshoot was more likely to be adopted as mainstream form of payment as it boasts both cheaper transactions costs and faster transaction processing times compared to that of bitcoin.
Bitcoin cash fell further from its an all-high of $2,790 to trade at $1290.60, down 4.19% while bitcoin gold slumped 17.51% to $197.97.
Ethereum, the second largest cryptocurrencies by market cap, rose 4.16% to $326.25.