The much hyped 1st August hard fork had given birth to Bitcoin Cash. Amidst much uncertainties regarding the future of Bitcoin in the aftermath of this fork, investors lined up to convert their holding into the nascent crypto form. Little did anyone know how future events would shape up. Three months and numerous legislative regulations hence the price of Bitcoin had skyrocketed crossing over the $7500 barrier in November causing more and more traders and investors to beeline into the same.
However Friday registered the lowest Bitcoin price figures since 1st November. When we looked deep into the background causes for the same we stumbled upon the relatively younger Bitcoin Cash which traders have been hooked on to for some time. As of noon GMT (7 a.m. ET) Bitcoin cash was up by 30% against dollar to $870.90.
This offshoot digital currency form surged up by more than 40% since its August 19th highest and was traded at around $947 . The main cause behind this hard fork were a minority group of developers who had had decided on bringing about an upgrade for hiking up the transaction speed of the digital currency forms. Another Bitcoin hard fork termed as SegWit2x which was scheduled to take place on November was called off on Wednesday because of decreasing support.
Joshua Raymond, the director of and CFD foreign-exchange broker XTB recently told Business Insider that:
“the delay to Segwit2x has damaged confidence amongst bitcoin investors concerning the much-needed resolution to speed up bitcoin’s slow processing speed. Everyone was hoping the Segwit2x would address this but unfortunately, the delay due to a lack of consensus on the mechanics has affected confidence. Confidence on transaction speed in Bitcoin has deteriorated significantly in recent months. As Bitcoin Cash enjoys much faster transaction speeds, we have started to see a recycling of positions out of Bitcoin into Bitcoin Cash as a consequence.”
Mati Greenspan, an analyst working with eToro, a trading platform, pointed out that, “after the SegWit2x hard fork was called off, BCH is now being seen as a favourite to one day replace BTC. If the Bitcoin community doesn’t come to a consensus about how to scale the network soon, it may run into congestion, in which case people will need an alternative.”
However it is imperative to note that the SegWit2x plan had a larger number of initial supporters compared to Bitcoin Cash.
In reaction to this news which according to many have diminished the market uncertainty, Bitcoin hit a record high of $7,879.06 but stumbled down the ladder by 9% and was traded at around $6500 on Friday .
Chris Burniske, the author of “Cryptoassets: The Innovative Investor’s Guide to Bitcoin and Beyond” recently stated that, “you can see people playing back and forth between bitcoin and bitcoin cash trading depending on where they think near-term catalysts may be. It’s been a battle of investors vs traders that were stockpiling bitcoin to get their ‘bitcoin2x dividend.'”
Given a hard fork, investors get awarded with an equivalent number of offshoot currency. Future of Bitcoin industry have been deemed uncertain due to disagreements of market experts over upgrade proposals. But this could not stop certain traders from buying Bitcoin before the split with the intention of benefitting from the pay-out received in terms of brand new currency tokens.
At the time of publishing this article Bitcoin Cash price was $947 with a total market cap of $15,905,845,363, whereas the price of Bitcoin was $6720 with a market cap of $112,057,734,335.
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