Bitcoin Cash (BCH) markets have been extremely bullish over the past two days after hovering in the $300 range for a solid week. Currently, one BCH is averaging $550 per token, and the market has pushed Ripple out of the way by taking the third highest market capitalization position.
Also read: Venezuelan Bitcoin Mining Continues Despite Government Crackdown
Other Miners Consider Mining Bitcoin Cash as the Network’s Mining Profitability Comes Close to Parity With BTC
The Bitcoin Cash network is moving along more smoothly on its eighteenth day as miners have processed 1062 blocks since August 1. Over the course of that period, many larger blocks have been found above the 1MB block size parameter. Most of the bigger blocks have been in the 2MB-4MB range, but on August 16th the mining pool Bitclub mined an 8MB block which confirmed 37,000 BCH transactions. The BCH chain’s difficulty has also dropped, and at the same time, the price has risen greatly. These two factors have led to a close profitability parity between both networks as bitcoin mining is currently only 2-6 percent more profitable to mine than bitcoin cash.
The BCH network still only has a few mining pools that have dedicated hashrate to processing the protocol’s blocks. The most prominent miners at the moment include Viabtc, Bitclub, and the ‘unknown mining pool.’ The mystery miner is still crunching away at a vast majority of blocks found on the network. The BCH chain is also 1480 blocks behind the BTC chain, and hashrate will have to pick up immensely to catch up. However, on August 17 the founder of Bitmain Technologies and the mining pool Antpool, Jihan Wu, said his pool might join BCH mining if others do so as well.
“Antpool will start to provide bitcoin cash mining option after at least one of Segwit supporter/fan pools start to mining bitcoin cash,” explains Jihan Wu on Twitter.
Bitcoin Cash Markets Spike Over 60%
For the past two days, BCH markets have been on fire, and the market is up over 60 percent at the time of writing. Currently, one bitcoin cash is $550, and the market is commanding a $9B market cap. Further, BCH markets have eclipsed ethereum trading volumes as the cryptocurrency has been trading $2B in volume over the past 48 hours. During the late hours of August 17, there was significant resistance in the $520 price territory, but BCH bulls surpassed these sell walls the next day. If a bearish trend picks up order books on Kraken, Bittrex and other BCH exchanges show a solid floor within the $450-470 range. Additionally, the trading platform Bittrex has announced it will process funds for customers after only six BCH confirmations as opposed to its former rule of ten confirmations.
BCH supporters are pretty excited about the digital asset’s market movements and the changes in mining profitability. Some of these BCH proponents believe a great mining “flippening” will happen around block 479808. As BCH mining profitability becomes more appealing to miners the chance of other pools joining in is a greater possibility, especially if bitcoin cash markets continue to rise.
BTC.com Provides a BCH Recovery Tool for a Variety of Wallets
In addition to the overall positive news, a splitting tool that can extract BCH from other wallets has been launched by BTC.com. “We are happy to announce that as of August 16, 2017, BTC.com offers a secure tool to extract bitcoin cash from other wallets,” explains the China-based startup.
“Recovering bitcoin cash from a bitcoin wallet in a do-it-yourself manner can be a risky process that requires serious expertise. That’s why we have developed this designated recovery tool, to make the process easy and seamless for everyone,” BTC.com adds.
What do you think about the current progress for the BCH chain and the recent market price spike? Let us know your opinions in the comments below.
Images via Shutterstock, Bitcoin Cash, and Crypto Compare.
Need to calculate your bitcoin holdings? Check our tools section.
