Bitcoin cash suffered a crash on Monday, trading nearly 20% down at $579 a coin after jumping to a record high of $942 during impressive weekend rallying. In this process, bitcoin cash reclaimed the spot as the third-largest cryptocurrency.
Despite the steep slide, bitcoin cash is still up about 110% since its creation at the beginning of August when it split from the original bitcoin blockchain.
“More exchanges are trading bitcoin cash now. Most people can buy and sell it (finally), so the wider speculative boom is on” said Sebastian Quinn-Watson of Blockchain Global of Business Insider.
Many Bitcoin exchanges and wallets didn’t immediately upgrade their infrastructure after the bitcoin/bitcoin cash fork, so many traders of this new cryptocurrency weren’t able to actively trade their holdings until late last week.
Josh Olszewicz, a big bitcoin trader but even bigger bitcoin cash skeptic, told Business Insider that speculation triggered bitcoin cash’s price spike. He ventured that there’s a “tinfoil hat” theory circling around the internet that the main backers of bitcoin cash are inflating its trading price.
“All they have to do is pump [its trading price] to increase mining profitability and hope miners jump ship to” Olszewicz speculated.
Recently, bitcoin cash became alot more profitable to mine than the original bitcoin.
