Bitcoin’s Recovery Picks Up Steam Following Fork
Bitcoin’s recovery from a temporary setback earlier in the week caused by bitcoin cash gained momentum Saturday, posting 13.86 percentage points in the last 24 hours with a market capitalization of $53.588 billion. Bitcoin’s gains surpassed Ethereum’s 12.94 points and Ripple’s 7.05 points.
Fourth place bitcoin cash continued its losing streak, dropping 18.82 points as its price fell to $220.40. Bitcoin cash had leaped from around $220 to $747.01 briefly on Wednesday before crashing Friday to $287 in early afternoon trade, according to coinmarketcap.com.
Bitcoin cash’s $3.632 billion market capitalization, however, remains more than billion dollars higher than fifth-place Litecoin’s $2.42 billion.
Bitcoin Turns a Corner
Ari Paul, CIO of BlockTower Capital, told CNBC bitcoin’s new gains were due to a relief rally after a “relatively uneventful” bitcoin cash split, as well as new investors buying bitcoin.
Paul said now that the Segregated Witness activation and the hard fork are past, bitcoin buyers see a positive outlook for the next two months.
Investors holding bitcoin at the time of the bitcoin cash split received an equal amount of bitcoin cash, and were able to trade it Tuesday. Some exchanges, however, did not start accepting bitcoin cash deposits until Thursday and Friday, according to CNBC.
Bitcoin entrepreneur and visionary Vinny Lingham tweeted that the next stop for bitcoin is $3,800 and that bitcoin cash is dead.
Price Sets a New Record
On Saturday afternoon, bitcoin recorded a new historic high of $3,290.01, according to coinmarketcap.com.
Bitcoin has now more than tripled in value for the year, gaining more than 10 percentage points in the first few days of August. The cryptocurrency has broken free of the trading range it held ever since reaching its prior record in mid-June of $3,025.
There could be a number of reasons for bitcoin’s rise beside the lessened threat by bitcoin cash and the improved likelihood that Segregated Witness will be implemented soon. One could be the recent adoption of bitcoin by established financial institutions.
Also read: Bitcoin soars to $3,200 in new all-time high; bitcoin cash drops to fourth
Bitcoin Gains Acceptance
The Chicago Board of Exchange (CBOE), one of the largest exchange groups in the world, recently announced a partnership with Gemini, the cryptocurrency exchange founded by Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, that will allow it to use Gemini trading data to power bitcoin derivatives and indices.
That agreement, which still needs to be approved by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), will see Gemini provide CBOE data on bitcoin and other digital currencies. Set to launch in CBOE’s CFE futures exchange as early as the fourth quarter of 2017, or early next year, it will support CBOE’s development of cash-settled futures.
Moreover, the agreement gives the exchange exclusive rights to use Gemini market data to create new indices for traders. If approved by the CFTC, it would bring more regulation and stability to the cryptocurrency ecosystem.
Bitcoin has maintained its dominance of the total cryptocurrency market; on Saturday, it commanded 47.92% of the total market compared to Ethereum’s 20.55%, according to coinmarketcap.com.
Featured image from Shutterstock.
