Bitcoin cash, the cryptocurrency born earlier this month, enjoyed a drastic surge in price over the weekend, pushed by strong demand in Korea.
The massive trade volume has made Korea the top cryptocurrency market in the world.
“The bitcoin cash offshoot, bitcoin cash, jumped to a record high near $1,000 Saturday in high trade volume, primarily from South Korea,” CNBC reported Saturday, when the price of bitcoin cash reached as high as $1,091.97 in session before closing at $754.56.
The 24-hour trade volume on Saturday for bitcoin cash was around $3.2 billion, and its market cap stood at $11.5 billion.
After bitcoin cash separated from bitcoin on Aug. 1 in an event known as the SegWit activation, the price of bitcoin cash reached over $700 the next day before falling in subsequent weeks. Up until Aug. 17, the value remained stable at around $300.
Then, the price began to climb. At Bithumb, Korea’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, bitcoin cash was valued at around 330,000 won ($290) on Aug. 17. Two days later, it was at 1.36 million won.
What initially triggered the rapid rise of bitcoin cash was a Twitter post from Wu Jihan, the Chinese co-founder of Bitmain, the largest bitcoin mining company in the world. The mining pool led by Wu’s Bitmain takes up about 20 percent of global bitcoin mining.
“Antpool will start to provide BCC mining option after at least one of SegWit supporters/fan pools start to mining BCC,” Wu tweeted Friday. Antpool refers to a mining operator under Bitmain. Larger mining volume leads to increases in the price of digital currencies.
While Wu’s comment gave the initial push, it was Korean traders who provided the momentum. The amount of general trading on Bithumb Saturday reached a record-high 2.6 trillion won. By comparison, the trade volume on the Kosdaq, Korea’s tech-heavy stock index, was 2.4 trillion won on Friday.
As of press time Wednesday, the 24-hour trade volume of bitcoin cash on Bithumb stood at $502 million, according to Coin Market Cap, a cryptocurrency data provider. The top three trading platforms for bitcoin cash were all Korean platforms - Bithumb, Coinone and Korbit. Together, they took up about 55 percent of all bitcoin cash trade globally.
Korea tops bitcoin cash market
http://koreajoongangdaily.joins.com/news/article/article.aspx?aid=3037499
RE: My Thoughts on Bitcoin Cash, Segwit and Segwit 2x (and Litecoin)