The new cryptocurrency has more than doubled in value during the last few days and keeps getting more support from the cryptocurrency community.
Bitcoin cash has made significant gains over the last few hours, with its price rising by more than 80%. The digital currency exceeded a $500 mark on Friday morning and continued its rally on Saturday moving past $900 for the first time.
At press time, Bitcoin Cash is trading at $890, according to CoinMarketCap. Thus, the cryptocurrency surpassed its maximum value of $750 that was achieved in less than two days since the bitcoin split on August 1.
Bitcoin cash is now the third most valuable digital currency after bitcoin and ethereum, with a market cap of more than $15 billion. The cryptocurrency has overtaken Ripple, which fell to the fourth position and now has a valuation of $5.9 billion.
Due to the price growth, it is becoming more profitable to mine bitcoin cash than bitcoin. Besides, the upcoming network difficulty adjustment will make it easier to mine bitcoin cash and as result more profitable. Many expect that BTC miners will be more inclined to switch to BCH.
Currently, the mining profitability difference between the two blockchains is 8%. Additionally, the bitcoin blockchain charges higher transaction fees of $6,000 per block on bitcoin, while bitcoin cash has lower fees of a maximum $50 per block.
Another factor that is driving the price of bitcoin cash is the growth of trade volume, which is mainly registered on South Korean exchanges. Local exchanges, including Bithumb, Korbit, and Coinone, accounted for more than 50% of the total BCH trading volume. Bithumb alone accounted for $1.7 billion of trade volume. Besides, there has been a several-hundred million dollar growth in BCH/USD and BCH/BTC trading.
According to Bitcoin Cash news, on August 16, bitcoin cash became the first virtual currency to mine an 8MB block which processed about 40,000 transactions. The network thus showed it could successfully process larger block size, as opposed to the bitcoin’s original 1MB block size which will be upgraded in the next months.
Initially, bitcoin cash faced lack of support from digital currency businesses, which refused to accept the new cryptocurrency. However, this is changing as more companies are starting to integrate bitcoin cash into their platforms. Switzerland’s Falcon Private Bank has recently announced it would add the new crytocurrency to its blockchain asset management services.
Bitcoin, meantime, is declining and is now valued at $4019, according to CoinMarketCap. On Thursday, the digital currency reached an all-time high of more than $4,500, before falling to $4,200 on Friday. Its market cap is estimated at $66,3 at the time of writing.
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