Bitcoin’s Independence Day: 8 years after the Block Size Wars

The value of Bitcoin has grown substantially since the BTC community asserted independence from miner domination on Aug. 1, 2017.

August 1 marks the eighth anniversary of a key moment in Bitcoin’s (BTC) history — the initial activation of Segregated Witness (SegWit) in 2017, a key software upgrade that reshaped the network’s future and triggered a hard fork.

The move, known as “Bitcoin Independence Day,” reduced miner influence over the protocol and led to the creation of Bitcoin Cash (BCH), highlighting the community's divisions over how Bitcoin should scale to support global use.

The “block size wars” were fought between those who wanted to keep the Bitcoin block size small and “big blockers,” a coalition of miners and businesses that wanted to include more transactions in each block to make BTC suitable for everyday payments and commercial transactions.

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