On August 1st the Bitcoin blockchain forked into two separate networks producing a digital currency called Bitcoin Cash (BCH). Currently, there’s been a total of twelve BCH blocks mined so far as two mining pools have been dedicating resources to the forked chain.
Also read: Fork Watch: BCH — The Ghost in the Exchange — Mostly
Bitcoin Cash Becomes the Third Highest Valued Cryptocurrency Market Cap
Yesterday we reported on the genesis day of — Bitcoin Cash — A historical event that will be forever remembered in cryptocurrency history as people witnessed the Bitcoin ‘community’ go separate ways with entirely different visions. Since the split, the price of BTC has consistently remained stable at roughly $2700. Meanwhile, BCH has been trading at around $475-590 per token beating out litecoin in market capitalization. Every exchange trading so far has had different prices per BCH producing significant spreads between each trading platform. According to popular market cap data sites like Coinmarketcap.com and Coincap.io Bitcoin Cash is the third highest valued market.
Currently, fifteen cryptocurrency trading platforms are trading BCH including Bittrex, Kraken, Yobit, Viabtc, and more. On August 1st many Japanese exchanges announced supporting BCH trading as well over the next few days. Further, the currency is seeing over $129 million in 24-hour trades and is holding the fourth highest trading volume across global cryptocurrency markets. So far the currency is paired with currencies like CNY, USD, EUR, Bitcoin (BTC), Tether (USDT), and even Doge.
The Unknown ‘MC Pool’ and the Successful Parting
There are two mining pools dedicating resources to the BCH chain Viabtc, and an unknown mining pool called “MC Pool.” The anonymous pool has mined roughly half of the twelve BCH blocks mined so far and is possibly located in Hong Kong. These specific BCH blocks’ coinbase data reveal an address to a backpackers hostel called Kwong Wah Mansion. Currently, MC Pool is finding the majority of BCH blocks but both pools seemed to have dropped a good portion of their hashrate as of August 2.
At the moment an exact hashrate of both pool’s efforts combined and the random miners worldwide mining the currency is unknown. However, people are currently speculating with data that there could be roughly 2-4 percent of the BTC network hashrate pointed at the BCH chain. A difficulty adjustment triggered at 09:40 UTC but has yet to activate. Further, the first BCH block was close to 2MB in size containing over 6K transactions but proceeding blocks have had very low transaction counts and various byte sizes per block.
The Chick Has Hatched But Still Has an Uphill Battle
So far for both blockchains, the transition has been smooth all around, and this includes trading markets. The apocalyptic scenarios never happened, and Bitcoin successfully hard forked showing that it can be done without chaos. Both sides of the debate did well informing the masses of what would happen and how to manage the two cryptocurrencies after the split. There were even people from the Reddit forums r/bitcoin and r/btc congratulating each other for going separate ways amicably. At the moment ‘small blockers’ are getting what they want with the upcoming arrival of Segwit, and ‘big blockers’ now have a protocol with a block size limit of 8MB.
There is still a long uphill battle for BCH to ‘survive’ and people will be monitoring this situation closely. The price has yet to be determined as exchanges are just coming back online and many people have not been moving BTC, and BCH over the past 24-hours. The BCH price has been extremely volatile over the past 12 hours. Some people with certain wallets are still unable to access their BCH so trading circulation and market liquidity is still very low. Furthermore, when difficulty adjusts it will drop 20 percent but the chain still needs more hashpower to flow smoothly. As of now, the chain is running very slowly which means it is not very profitable for miners at the moment and clearing transactions will take longer than usual.
What do you think about the events over the past 24-hours? Let us know in the comments below.
Images via Shutterstock, Blockchair, Coinmarketcap, and Coin Dance.
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