Bitcoin Cash May Become the Fourth Largest Cryptocurrency by Market Cap

A lot of people will be keeping a very close eye on Bitcoin Cash today. After weeks of waiting, the tokens will finally be issued to Bitcoin holders in a few hours. Make sure your funds are located in a compatible wallet or exchange to ensure you can obtain these tokens accordingly. In anticipation of this major event, it appears the BCH value is not moving all that much on ViaBTC. The trading volume is increasing, though.

August 1st is Bitcoin Cash Creation Day

The long wait is finally over for most Bitcoin Cash supporters. Although it appears the majority of the Bitcoin community has no desire to see this project succeed, support for BCH is growing slowly. The only question is whether or not this blockchain will receive enough mining power to keep things moving along for the foreseeable future. A split like Ethereum and Ethereum Classic seems to be the most plausible outcome at this point in time.

As one would expect, things are slowly heating up in the BCH IOU market as well. ViaBTC has successfully launched multiple Bitcoin Cash trading pairs well ahead of the token actually being issued to Bitcoin holders. Although these markets are not necessarily the best price indicators for this altcoin, things are looking rather interesting as we speak. One BCH is valued at 0.1003 BTC right now, although there was a daily high of 0.1149 BTC. All things are considered, the value has changed by 0.3%, which indicates strong support can be maintained around the 0.1 BTC mark with relative ease.

Do keep in mind these markets represent IOU tokens and not necessarily BCH tokens that will be in circulation later today. There will be a lot of price volatility to contend with and no one can predict how things will play out. Technical analysis is useless at this point as well as there is no chart to base patterns on. Using ViaBTC’s IOU market is not an official indicator for what may or may not happen to the BCH price in the coming days.

To make matters even more interesting, people tend to overlook how many BCH tokens will be brought in circulation later today. They will be issued at a 1:1 ratio based on the amount of bitcoins held in a compatible wallet or exchange. At best, that means there will be just over 16.5 million BCH tokens in circulation. It is unclear how many of those tokens will be spendable when everything is said and done, though. 

If the current price is any indicator – which it probably won’t be – Bitcoin Cash could have a market cap of over US$3bn by tonight. That would make it the fourth largest cryptocurrency is existence, which is rather significant. However, there is a chance it will take away a part of Bitcoin’s market cap, as this value has to come from somewhere. At the same time, the Bitcoin price may not be affected at all. Instead, the combined value of Bitcoin and Bitcoin Cash could easily surpass US$50bn.

All of this shows there are still many uncertainties where Bitcoin Cash is concerned. We do know the tokens will be “created” today and issued to Bitcoin holders who took the necessary precautions to receive them. An interesting future lies ahead for Bitcoin, that much is certain. So far, the Bitcoin price is not budging under the pressure, although most of the overnight gains have been wiped out again. A very intriguing situation to keep an eye on, even if you do not own any Bitcoin right now.