Why Bitcoin Cash Prices are on the Rise, After a Nasty Fall?

By Prashant Jha

Bitcoin Cash hard-forked from the original Bitcoin network in August 2017 and became the 4th largest cryptocurrency in terms of market cap. Everything was going just fine until the infamous November 15 split of the BCH network into BCH ABC and BSV took place. In order to understand the sudden surge in prices of the BCH, we need to take a look back at the sequence of events since the Hard-Fork on November 15 commenced.

The Infamous November 15 BCH Hard-Fork: A timeline

The Hard-Fork of the BCH network was marred into controversy even before the final Fork took place. In a normal scheme of things, the hard fork results in the formation of a new token which separates its operation from the main chain. However, in the case of BCH network, two parties staked their claim over the forked token. Roger Ver led BCH ABC (now simply known as BCH) and Craig Wright led BCH SV (now known as BSV).

The event garnered a ton of unnecessary attention all thanks to the war of words between the two sides. Both the parties never missed a single opportunity to bad mouth each other leading up to the fork and even after the commencement of fork. Threats over manipulation of hash rate were openly thrown around and claims of being the authentic token were pretty common.

Events Following the Fork

When the Hard-Fork finally commenced, both the sides put in a ton of effort to get ahead of each other. Pumping extra hash power into the system, causing losses to the miner community. However early battles favored the Roger Ver led BCH ABC network, they were ahead in terms of hash power generation, numbers of blocks mined, trading value, market cap or even the listings on different exchanges. The war seemed almost over for BSV side as they recognized a couple of their own blocks (a very rare event, which is not supposed to happen in the first place) which might have resulted in delisting from several exchanges.

But, for some odd reasons, Craig Wright aka ‘fake Toshi’ never looked disheartened and always maintained his stance as the alpha in the game. His confidence and believe almost came true in early December, when in a bizarre turn of events, Roger Ver and his side was sued by United Group over BCH network manipulation.

The Downfall from the top

The lawsuit came into public domain amid the bleeding crypto trade market, which saw BCH losing 24% of its market cap within a week. Right after the Fork, BCH was trading over $300 and BSV was trying to break above $100 mark. In the wake of the lawsuit, the prices fell below $100 mark for BCH for the first time.

The more bizarre part was the sudden rise of the BSV when almost all the cryptocurrencies were finding it difficult to see an upward movement, BSV astonished everyone with its bullish trends, taking its trading price and a market cap above the BCH network for a short period of time.

There were rumors on Reddit and social media over a possible network manipulation by whales to dethrone the BCH from its market position, however, until any solid proof comes forward these are nothing more than conspiracy theories.

Why BCH is Finally Rising Again?

During its downfall from the top, BCH lost its spot to Ethereum as the sixth largest cryptocurrency. However, in the past couple of days when the bulls have finally taken the charge, the whole crypto trade market is going green and the biggest beneficiary is BCH itself. On December 19th, BCH made a humongous jump of 28.9% and regained its sixth spot from Ethereum.

One main reason for the rise can be the volatile nature of crypto trade market. In absence of any real-world entity backing the cryptos, the prices are highly reflective over the buzz it creates in the market. The certain example is December 6th lawsuit, which eventually tumbled and brought a lot of panic among the investors and whales alike.

If a negative press gets well circulated, people start dumping and selling their crypto assets while a positive or optimistic press can lead to buying ups.

Final Thoughts

The volatile nature of the trade market and cryptocurrencies are the reason behind both the rise of the market as well as the downfall. In 2018, there has seen massive growth and wider acceptance of the blockchain technology, which might help in stabilizing trade markets and decreasing the volatility further.

The markets are finally on the recovery mode since late 18th December and hopefully, the market would stabilize further to make the Christmas for crypto enthusiast a lot merrier.