While most people believed that Bitcoin’s price might drop when the August 1st doomsday approached, the market is showing signs of resilience. In fact, Bitcoin’s price is currently trading at $2860, up 7% from a low of $2680 only a day earlier.
The Bitcoin Cash fork is expected to happen in roughly 7 hours from the time of writing. You can keep live track of the countdown on timeanddate.
As many services plan to shut down operations on August 1st until the hard fork is resolved, the market may feel some negative pressure. If novice users decide to withdraw Bitcoins around that time, they may get frustrated with the cryptocurrency and decide to sell it while its still high. For example, Coinbase had been experiencing delays in withdrawals which left many users quite unsatisfied.
However, at this point the hard fork was planned months earlier, and at the end of the day it doesn’t have that big of an effect on bitcoin holders. Other than minor inconveniences and delays, the network will still remain fully functional.
One thing to keep in mind is that Bitcoin holders will be credited Bitcoin Cash at a 1:1 rate. While many view it as “free money”, nothing could be further from the truth. When the fork happens, there will be those users who prefer the big block school of thought and will sell their Bitcoin and buy Bitcoin Cash instead.
This trend will create a downward pressure on the BTC market while creating an upwards pressure on BCH, ultimately dropping Bitcoin’s price and raising Bitcoin Cash’s price. You can currently trade Bitcoin Cash as futures on either HitBTC or ViaBTC, the asset is currently trading at roughly $290 suggesting that BCH’s price is 1/10th that of Bitcoin.
While many traders are betting on BCH’s price rise, most exchanges are not planning to support the coin, in fact only a handful of exchanges are going to even credit BCH, so if you are looking to get some BTC for your Bitcoins make sure to move those coins to a wallet you fully control.