Bitcoin

New Bitcoin Cash Highly Volatile in its First Week of Trading

Bitcoin (BTC) split into two digital currencies with a new one named Bitcoin Cash (BCC) being born on Tuesday, 1st August 2017. While the original Bitcoin has remained stable despite the split, the new Bitcoin Cash has been highly volatile in its first week. On Wednesday, one day after its birth, Bitcoin Cash exchanged for $700, a very promising start. However, on Friday, the digital currency was down more than half to trade at $287. During the same week, Bitcoin was at its highest approaching $2,900, one of the highest values it has achieved since the year began.

CoinMarketCap which tracks prices across exchanges reported that on Tuesday when Bitcoin Cash was created, it started at $220, rose to $700 by Wednesday and then plugged to $287 on Friday. Digital currency experts attributed Friday’s performance to an increase in the number of exchanges accepting Bitcoin Cash deposits. On his part, Brian Kelly, a CNBC contributor and CEO of BKCM which runs a digital assets strategy believes that the price drop resulted from an increased number of people selling the Bitcoin Cash.

All investors who held Bitcoin in various exchanges as of Tuesday morning when the split happened were entitled to receive an equivalent amount of Bitcoin Cash.

Bitcoin Cash investors have something to smile about after Bitfinex, a major digital currency exchange announced Friday morning that it would forthwith accept Bitcoin Cash deposits and withdrawals. Earlier on Thursday, another large exchange, Bittrex, had begun accepting Bitcoin Cash deposits. On the same day, Trezor, a major digital currency storage site (wallet) announced that it had restored customer access to Bitcoin Cash. Similarly, Coinbase’s GDAX exchange which had earlier said that it would not give customers Bitcoin Cash announced that it would support the new currency from January 1, 2018.

CryptoCompare reported that close to two thirds of trading in Bitcoin Cash was being done in Bitcoin with 43 percent of the transactions being conducted on Bittrex. The site further showed that 22 percent of the transactions were conducted in U.S. Dollar.

On Friday, CoinDesk reported that the original Bitcoin traded at $2894.91 which was a three percent rise from its Tuesday value. This is the second highest value that Bitcoin has achieved this year after it traded for $3,025 in June. In the meantime, rival digital currency, Ethereum fell by 2 percent to trade at $219. However, this was a negligible drop, considering that Ethereum’s value has risen by more than 2000 percent this year alone.

Bitcoin Cash was born on Tuesday morning when a minority of the developers decided to go ahead with an upgrade process. The lack of consensus on whether to go on with the upgrade or not had led to a stalemate. Some Bitcoin cash supporters such as Rodger Ver, an early Bitcoin investor, say that direction taken by Bitcoin Cash is much in line with the original developers’ intention.

Comments
To Top

Pin It on Pinterest

Share This