Bitcoin Cash Surges Past $500 Thanks to Insatiable Korean Demand

Various cryptocurrencies are experiencing their fair share of upward momentum as we speak. Although most people don’t look beyond the Bitcoin price, there are plenty of other currencies and digital assets to be taken into account as well. Bitcoin Cash, for example, is seeing a much-needed uptrend as we speak. After nearly a full week of hovering around the US$300 mark, the price is heading towards US$500 and beyond.

Bitcoin Cash Price Eyes $500

It has to be said that not too many people gave Bitcoin Cash a fighting chance when the ecosystem was created.  That was only natural, as many Bitcoin users felt the new coin was an attempt at a hostile takeover. Making Bitcoin scale has proven to be very problematic this past year, mainly due to various sides engaging in political squabbles and debating why specific implementations of a solution would not work as expected. The dust has finally settled, and we currently have two different types of Bitcoin with which to contend.

On paper, there is no reason why we can’t have two different versions of Bitcoin duking it out. Although Bitcoin Cash and Bitcoin are very similar, they aren’t identical by any means. The people running the Bitcoin Cash system lack the vast development expertise of the Bitcoin Core contributors. Moreover, Bitcoin Cash has neither SegWit activation nor Lightning Network implementation. Instead, its supporters opted for a straight-up block size increase to 8MB. This will not necessarily be the final block size of the blockchain either, as tests are being conducted to support up to 32MB blocks if needed.

Whether or not Bitcoin Cash fares better or worse than Bitcoin is anybody’s guess right now. The Bitcoin network will soon see Segregated Witness activate, although its scaling capabilities have yet to be tested in a live network environment. Should the scaling solution fail to clear up lingering Bitcoin mempool issues, it is not unlikely some people would look to Bitcoin Cash. After all, given the need to make Bitcoin scale, if the scaling solution still leaves much to be desired, things haven’t advanced by any means. We will know more in the coming weeks, as the activation will occur in the not-so-distant future.

All of this creates a very speculative environment as far as Bitcoin Cash is concerned. The “Bitcoin Altcoin” has reached the US$500 price mark for the first time in a while. Although BCH has not been around for all that long, its price drop from US$1,100 to nearly US$200 caught a lot of people by surprise. At the time, most users assumed that would be the end of the altcoin, but nothing could have been further from the truth. Speculation on the future of the BCH price will become a lot more frequent over the coming days and weeks; that much is certain.

Looking over the exchanges, it seems South Korea has an incredibly high demand for Bitcoin Cash. Bithumb, the exchange that continues to surprise everybody every single week, recorded over US$669 million in trading volume for BCH/KRW. That number may not be entirely accurate, though, as it is five times as high as Korbit, which is the second exchange on the list. Then again, both Korean platforms, alongside Coinone in fifth place, generate the vast majority of BCH trading volume right now. It is surprising to see this altcoin experience a trading volume of nearly US$1.7 billion in the past 24 hours, to say the least.

The rest of the world has to follow these exchanges, and it looks as if fiat currency markets are taking a strong lead over the BCH/BTC markets right now. Bitfinex’s USD market is showing some strong volume as well, which is unprecedented for this market. Now that most people have dumped their coins, Bitcoin Cash may start to enjoy some real growth. At this rate, both Bitcoin and Bitcoin Cash will reach mining profitability parity in a few days from now. If that were to happen, all future bets and expectations could be thrown out the window completely.