Bitcoin price volatility is nothing new to cryptocurrency holders. But during the last couple of days Bitcoin dropped more than 12% from all-time high $6,165 reached on Saturday, October 21. At the time of writing (1:36 PM UTC) the price is at $5,545.
In the chart below you can see the Bitcoin price trend during the last 5 days (data: TradingView). The price has dropped as low as $5.388.
Some market observers attribute this correction to concerns about the upcoming hard forks, Bitcoin Gold (which already occured yesterday) and more importantly Segwit2X (S2X). The latter is a contentious fork as it aspires to be the "real bitcoin" despite the fact that none of the Bitcoin Core developers support it. The Bitcoin community is clearly divided on this matter, but that was always the situation in the ever-going "scaling debate".
For this reason, traders fear what the situation will be after S2X hard forks creating its own blockchain. The good scenario is that two distinct chains will exist, legacy Bitcoin or B1X and Segwit2X or B2X. The worse scenario is that one of this will be in need to hard fork again, due to some reason, i.e. missing replay protection.
Another explanation of the recent Bitcoin correction is that the price was pumped by an influx of sort-term buyers who wanted to make quick profit from the Bitcoin Gold (BTG) hard fork. As JustCryptoNews.com has reported, bitcoin holders as of block height 491,407 would be entitled to claim an equal amount of BTG, once the new chain goes public and BTG tokens are listed on crypto exchanges. Thus, the correction we see know in Bitcoin price might well be those buyers that are selling bitcoins which they bought just for the hard fork split event.