Over the last 24 hours, Bitcoin Cash (BCH) has increased by around 12 percent from $425 to $477 prior to its hard fork.
On November 2, CCN reported that Bitcoin.com and Binance decided to support the version of Bitcoin Cash set forth by ABC, the original developers of the BCH software that forked the Bitcoin blockchain network last year.
Upon the announcement of Bitcoin.com and Binance, the price of Bitcoin Cash increased from $425 to $460, briefly reaching $470. Since then, the price of BCH has risen from $460 to $477, with strong momentum and volume
The volume of BCH, which remained below $200 million behind ripple (XRP) throughout the past two weeks, has increased to $471 million, nearly doubling the volume of XRP.
Why Has BCH Started to Surge Again?
On November 3, Coinbase released a statement to its investor disclosing its support for the original roadmap of Bitcoin Cash from bitcoincash.org. Throughout the next two weeks, Coinbase, the largest crypto-to-fiat exchange in the global market, stated that it would take appropriate steps to evaluate the network and support BCH.
“Twice a year, the Bitcoin Cash (BCH) network hard forks as part of scheduled protocol upgrades. The next BCH hard fork is scheduled for Nov 15, 2018, and Coinbase is prepared to support the published roadmap from bitcoincash.org. However, unlike previous BCH hard forks, there is a competing proposal that is not compatible with this published roadmap.”
Historically, major cryptocurrencies like BTC and Ethereum have tended to surge in value prior to the release of a fork as investors of the original chain are rewarded with the newly created cryptocurrency based on a 1:1 ratio.
For instance, in August 2017, when BCH officially hard-forked the Bitcoin network, investors in BTC were rewarded with BCH with the equivalent amount they had in BTC.
The rise in the price of BCH over the last 24 hours is mainly attributable to two factors: increasing support towards the published roadmap of Bitcoin Cash and the expected distribution of the new Bitcoin Cash fork to the existing investors of BCH.
Volume is Still Concerning
According to cryptocurrency technical analyst Eric Thies, in previous major corrections, the cryptocurrency market had not shown such a low level of volatility until the accumulation phase.
Throughout the past two months, mostly due to low volume in the market, major cryptocurrencies remained relatively stable in a low price range.
“1 week Historical Volatility levels (per CMC) did not reach this low in 2014 bear market until mid-way into accumulation phase. Surprisingly, volatility didn’t bottom out until price was already +155% from the trend low,” Thies said.
While the three-month stability in the price of BTC could lead to a strong short-term rally by the year’s end, the low volume of major digital assets could make it more challenging for the market to initiate an upward movement.
Featured Image from Shutterstock. Charts from TradingView.
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