This past week bitcoin cash (BCH) markets have been suffering from the bearish sentiment plaguing cryptocurrencies across the board. On February 6 the price of BCH reached a low of $740 per coin but has since bounced back to the $950-1,050 region on Bitstamp Tuesday evening.
Bitcoin Cash Markets Begin to See Recovery Ahead
This week bitcoin cash markets took a hit as BCH had lost roughly $588 USD (-39%) in value over the past seven days. At the moment the price has rebounded and is coasting along at just between the $950-1,050 zone after bouncing back much of Wednesday’s trading sessions. BCH trade volume has been averaging roughly $650 million to $1 billion over the past week. Exchanges swapping the most bitcoin cash today include Okex, Bitfinex, Hitbtc, GDAX, and Huobi. Currently, the top currencies traded with bitcoin cash include BTC (57%), USD (21%), tether (USDT 11%), the Korean won (4%), and the euro (2%).
New Localbitcoincash Features, Openbazaar Integration, and a Bitcoin Cash SMS Application
Even though markets were down this past week, the bitcoin cash community got a bunch of infrastructure support and new applications. For instance, everyone in the BCH community is talking about a new app called Cointext which aims to create the ability to send bitcoin cash through text (SMS). According to the creators, all texts are on-chain transactions like the tipping platform Chaintip. However, with the platform being so new, some BCH supporters are skeptical of this project being secure when used via text messages.
Another interesting BCH feature announced this week came from the Localbitcoincash exchange which announced it had added skycoin and smartcash services to the platform. The implementation features no fees to these types of trades, explains the exchange developers. “No fee exchange is exactly what it is, it’s totally free, and you can keep exchanging the different cryptocurrencies supported by our platform, and there are no trading fees involved,” Localbitcoincash reveals on February 7.
Just recently the decentralized cryptocurrency infused marketplace Openbazaar integrated bitcoin cash and zcash into the latest 2.1.0 version.
“This release is the first step towards allowing more options for cryptocurrencies in Openbazaar — It includes native support for nodes using one cryptocurrency at a time, bitcoin, bitcoin cash, or zcash,” explains the Openbazaar
Another addition to the BCH infrastructure is the AcceptBitcoin.Cash website has added an adult section to the portal. The developers of the website believe there is a demand for adult merchants to start accepting bitcoin cash. Further, the team said it has seen over 70 submissions since it implemented a request form, and the team added nearly every single merchant to the site in under three weeks of usage.
BCH Supporters Remain Optimistic
In other news this week a fake bitcoin cash token was created on the Omni layer chain. According to reports, the Omni chain’s ability to generate asset tokens was used to create a misleading BCH token. BCH supporters think the token was created to cause confusion while adding to the growing list of scammy snapshot forks that have come into existence over the past few months.
Overall the BCH community is in high spirits even with the past few weeks of bearish market sentiment. The protocol continues to get support nearly every day from exchanges, wallets, and merchants. Bitcoin cash markets are also starting to gather steam again alongside the rest of the cryptocurrencies who got hammered this past weekend.