Bitcoin Cash Up Over 50% – Hard Forks and Coin Burning?
Up Over 50% in Less Than a Month!
Whether you love or hate it, Bitcoin Cash (BCH) has rallied from the $600 region to a staggering $1,400, giving traders and investors who bought the monthly low almost 60% profit!
Overall, the cryptocurrency markets have bounced back from the lows, with around $120 billion flowing back into the volatile ecosystem, triggering similar price moves with popular coins. In the top ten, Bitcoin Cash and EOS have received the largest gains.
Bitcoin Cash split from the Bitcoin (BTC) network back in August 2017 as the scaling debate reached a sudden conclusion between the two flagship solutions for becoming payment networks at scale.
Each version of Bitcoin went its own way. Bitcoin Cash uses on-chain scaling via increasing the block size, while Bitcoin activated Segregated Witness and off-chain applications, such as the Lightning Network and other functions that are still in the BETA phase.
Why the Huge Gains? Hard Forks and Coin Burning
With the markets in general beginning to bounce back, there are specific reasons why Bitcoin Cash outperformed other cryptocurrencies in the top ten.
On May 15th, 2018, Bitcoin Cash will be undergoing another hard fork. The objective for this is to increase its transactional block size from 8MB to 32MB.
“The Bitcoin Cash network is scheduled to upgrade the consensus rules. The Bitcoin Cash development community performs periodic and regular network upgrades in order to evolve the network.“ – Bitcoinabc.org
Technical upgrades and improvements are usually a bullish indicator in the cryptocurrency markets, and the news of the upcoming hard fork could be a key driver in the strong performance of Bitcoin Cash.
“The most notable change is the increase of the maximum block size to 32 MB.”
Other changes to potentially be made during the hard fork will include the removal of the Segregated Witness protocol, block intervals lowered to 2.5 minutes (similar to Litecoin), and the reactivation of the ability to develop smart contracts and applications, much like Ethereum.
Another catalyst for the markets to rally behind Bitcoin Cash is the increased support given by Chinese-based mining pool, Antpool by burning Bitcoin Cash coins.
12% of the Bitcoin Cash mining fees collected by Antpool will be sent to a permanently inaccessible BCH address. The plan is to reduce the amount of Bitcoin Cash in circulation, in an attempt to increase its scarcity in the markets.
“Some BITCOIN CASH (BCH) investors may have noticed that Antpool has recently begun burning BCH by sending mining fees to a black hole address with each block mined. Twelve percent of the transaction fees earned by the mining pool are burnt.” – Antpool.com
It appears that the war between Bitcoin and Bitcoin Cash is still ongoing. While the battle for scaling Bitcoin rages on, other cryptocurrencies are implementing their own ideas, solutions, or will integrate what BTC and BCH are using.
Disclaimer: This is not investment advice. Cryptocurrencies are still volatile and experimental, so please conduct critical research and only invest what you are willing to lose.