LONDON (Reuters) - Bitcoin dropped below $7,000 on Friday to trade more than $1,000 down from an all-time high hit on Wednesday, as some traders dumped it for a clone called Bitcoin Cash, sending its value up around a third.
Bitcoin has been on a tear in recent months, with a vertiginous sevenfold increase in value since the start of the year that has led to many warnings the bitcoin market - now worth well over $100 billion - has become a bubble that is about to burst.

It reached a record high of $7,888 around 1800 GMT on Wednesday after a software upgrade planned for next week that could have split the cryptocurrency in a so-called “fork” was suspended.

But it has quickly retreated from that peak, falling to as low as $6,718 around 1330 GMT on Friday. It later recovered a touch to trade around $6,880 by 1645 GMT, but that was still down almost 4 percent on the day.

Bitcoin gold is set to go live this weekend.

In a new blog post, the developers behind the fork of the bitcoin blockchain said that they would release a formal software client for download at 7:00 PM UTC on Nov. 12. Originally set for a public launch on Nov. 1, the project is backed by LightningASIC, a seller of mining hardware based in Hong Kong, as well as a community of relatively unknown developers.

As reported by CoinDesk, the idea behind bitcoin gold is to keep most properties of the protocol, but restrict the use of specialized chips for mining, or the process by which new transactions are added to a blockchain (while also creating new tokens as a reward).

It's also the latest example of a "airdropped" cryptocurrency that will distribute new coins to anyone who owned bitcoin at the time of the split, or up until the date the ledger of transactions started to differ.

Yet in a move criticized by some observers, the team behind bitcoin gold has been mining blocks in insolation since the new network was formally created last month, with a certain amount of coins being set aside to support development.

In comments, the team behind the effort sought to send a signal of confidence to the market, perhaps owing to concerns circulating around the effort.

"We are extremely grateful for the community around the world who have been contributing hash power to our testnets; besides patiently testing their own mining process, they allow exchanges, pools, wallet developers, and all other service operators to implement and test their support of BTG so that the bitcoin gold community can have a full suite of services at launch time," the project's backers said in a statement.

In the days ahead, exchanges will no doubt be watching the launch. Soon after its August release, bitcoin cash, another cryptocurrency that forked the bitcoin network, amassed a nearly $4 billion market value.

Exchanges and traders will no doubt be watching to see if history repeats.

In a new blog post, those behind a yet-to-be-officially-released fork of the bitcoin blockchain said that they would release the bitcoin gold client for download at 7:00 PM UTC on Nov. 12.

Originally set for a public launch on Nov. 1, the project is backed LightningASIC, a seller of mining hardware based in Hong Kong, as well as a broader open-source community of relatively unknown developers. The idea behind bitcoin gold, according to its supporters, is to restrict the use of specialized chips for mining, or the process by which new transactions are added to a blockchain (while also creating new tokens as a reward).

It's also the latest example of an airdropped cryptocurrency that shares a transaction history with the primary bitcoin network – that is up, up until the date the ledger of transactions starts to differ. Yet in a move criticized by some observers, the team behind bitcoin gold has been mining blocks in insolation since the new network formally began last month, with that "premined" amount of coins being set aside to support development.

"We are extremely grateful for the community around the world who have been contributing hash power to our testnets; besides patiently testing their own mining process, they allow exchanges, pools, wallet developers, and all other service operators to implement and test their support of BTG so that the Bitcoin Gold community can have a full suite of services at launch time," the project's backers said in a statement.

Its best time to invest in legitimate project

Reports of 2X’s death have been greatly exaggerated. That’s according to a statement issued by little-known mining group Bitpico. In a defiant message that appeared on a mailing list, Bitpico claimed to control 30% of the network hashrate and to be pressing ahead with the B2X fork regardless.
The Zombie Fork That Just Won’t Die
The message posted by Bitpico raised the prospect of Segwit2x being resurrected within hours of being laid to rest. The original statement halting the proposed fork to the bitcoin network, signed by Mike Belshe and five other major backers, unequivocally said:

We are suspending our plans for the upcoming 2MB upgrade.
Bitpico elected to ignore this memo however, averring that they would press ahead with the hard fork nevertheless because “everything is set in motion”. They continued:

Backing down the difficulty right now is a strategy. Wonder why 30% network hash-rate disappeared? It’s ours; the miners that will continue what is set in motion. A handful of humans cannot stop what they have no control over.
The audaciousness of the claim garnered a lot of attention, and opened the door to the intriguing possibility of Segwit2x living on. Closer scrutiny of the little-known Bitpico group reveals a few anomalies however. In particular, their claim to control 30% of the hashrate doesn’t appear to hold up.

Who the Hell Are Bitpico?
No sooner had the name #BitPico begun trending on Twitter than the group’s statement was picked apart and their very identity called into question. It was pointed out that there is little evidence of Bitpico’s existence prior to September of this year, and their claim to own a significant proportion of hashing power seems fanciful to say the least. As Wikipedia might put it, “citation needed”.

User mistakenly takes control of hundreds of wallets containing cryptocurrency Ether, destroying them in a panic while trying to give them back
More than $300m of cryptocurrency has been lost after a series of bugs in a popular digital wallet service led one curious developer to accidentally take control of and then lock up the funds, according to reports.

Unlike most cryptocurrency hacks, however, the money wasn’t deliberately taken: it was effectively destroyed by accident. The lost money was in the form of Ether, the tradable currency that fuels the Ethereum distributed app platform, and was kept in digital multi-signature wallets built by a developer called Parity. These wallets require more than one user to enter their key before funds can be transferred.

On Tuesday Parity revealed that, while fixing a bug that let hackers steal $32m out of few multi-signature wallets, it had inadvertently left a second flaw in its systems that allowed one user to become the sole owner of every single multi-signature wallet.