DARKCOIN BLOCKCHAIN FORKS, RESULTING IN PRICE CRASH

DarkCoin is one of the most popular cryptocurrencies, and has experienced a massive rally during the past month.

The price per DarkCoin was higher than Litecoin at the peak of the rally, and DarkCoin had the 3rd wealthiest cryptocurrency market cap. http://www.usacryptocoins.com/thecryptocurrencytimes/uncategorized/price-of-darkcoin-rallies-now-has-the-3rd-highest-cryptocurrency-market-cap/

Over the past 24 hours DarkCoin has experienced some severe problems. DarkCoin masternodes were implemented yesterday. These masternodes are used to ‘mix’ DarkCoins, essentially making transactions completely anonymous. If you own a masternode you get paid 10% of the block reward every time your masternode is selected, which can end up being quite profitable depending on the total number of masternodes. The catch is it costs 1000 DarkCoin to setup your own masternode, which is around $10,000 currently. Part of the reason for the rally over the past few weeks was excitement for these masternodes.

DarkCoin had to change its code in order to use masternodes, and they did a controlled fork of the blockchain to achieve this. Everything appeared to be running smoothly for a few hours after the masternodes began to work, but then the DarkCoin blockchain split into many forks. Apparently some “bad” masternodes were the cause of the forks.

Blockchain forks are extremely bad for a cryptocurrency. If you sent DarkCoins during the fork, there is a chance you would lose them forever if you sent them out on the wrong fork. Ultimately only 1 blockchain will be recognized, and if your coins end up on another blockchain they will disappear. There are widespread reports of DarkCoin disappearing from mining pools over the past 24 hours, since the pools were mining on the wrong fork. Also exchanges probably took a major hit, since DarkCoin deposited from the wrong fork confirmed initially and then disappeared later.

Masternodes are being temporarily removed from the DarkCoin network in order to bring stability back to the blockchain ( https://darkcointalk.org/threads/fork-to-stop-masternode-payments.883/ ).The problem hasn’t been fixed yet, there are still forks being reported as of this writing. Cryptsy and Mintpal, which are major cryptocurrency exchanges, have halted DarkCoin deposits/withdrawals temporarily to prevent further losses. DarkCoin deposits/withdrawals will resume once the fork is resolved.

The price of DarkCoin crashed when the news of the fork came out, going from 0.025 Bitcoin per DarkCoin ($14.50) to 0.016 Bitcoin per DarkCoin ($9.35) currently. This is a drastic 36% reduction in price. At this point markets are frozen for deposits/withdrawals, so it is hard to ascertain where the market price will go from here. It is possible DarkCoin could drop even more when exchanges reopen. This could also just be a bump in the road, and DarkCoin’s price could recover. DarkCoin’s price rise over the past few weeks has been very bubble like though, and forks tend to pop bubbles.

source: http://www.usacryptocoins.com/thecryptocurrencytimes/uncategorized/darkcoin-blockchain-forks-resulting-in-price-crash-and-temporary-delisting-from-exchanges/

DARKCOIN BLOCKCHAIN FORKS, RESULTING IN PRICE CRASH