Led by Korea
The price of Bitcoin cash (BCH), an offshoot of the legacy Bitcoin blockchain, surpassed US$1,000 (1.14 million won) on August 19, reaching another record high. This was due to the surge in BCH’s mining profitability and high trade volume in South Korea.
According to Coin Market Cap, BCH touched a high of US$1091.97 on July 19, up more than 45 percent. Its price increased by nearly 419 percent in 19 days after BCH was traded at US$210.38 (239,728 won) on July 1 for the first time.
The price of BCH, which spent the time of coexistence with Bitcoin for two weeks in the market, rose in earnest after the news that a miner mined an 8-megabyte (MB) block on July 16 spread. It means that the BCH size and speed improvement were achieved in practice as promised when it was first introduced. Bitcoin (BTC), which has a 1-MB block size, will be upgraded to a 2-MB block size this fall.
These made BCH so attractive to especially miners and boosted high demand, according to CNBC. Blockchain monitoring firm Coin Dance said the BCH’s mining profitability is 69 percent higher than that of Bitcoin.
The BCH’s trading volume also exceeded other digital currencies such as Bitcoin and Ethereum.
The trading volume of BCH reached US$4.4 billion (5.01 trillion won) on July 19, surpassing US$3.4 billion (3.87 trillion won) of Bitcoin and US$918 million (1.04 trillion won) of Ethereum.
In particular, the Korean won accounted for nearly half of the BCH’s trading volume. About US$1.7 billion (1.93 trillion) worth of BCH were traded on July 19 alone at the Bithumb Exchanges in South Korea. On the other hand, the won took up only 10.5 percent of the Bitcoin’s trading volume.
With such a high demand, U.S. cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase has announced plans to support BCH as of January 1 2018, when users be able to withdraw the new cryptocurrency. Initially, Coinbase had informed users that it would not support Bitcoin Cash.
The price of BCH stood at US$745.01 (847,821 won) as of 7am on July 21 in Korean time, down 2.06 percent from the previous day. Bitcoin is now being traded at US$4,145.62 (4.72 million won), while Ethereum is being traded at US$298.36 (339,534 won).