Bitcoin Cash, one of the early offshoots of the original digital currency, has more than doubled in value over the past week.
The surge began after a new crypto exchange backed by firms including Citadel Securities, Fidelity Digital Assets and Charles Schwab Corp. said it’s gone live. EDX Markets, an institutional-only exchange announced in September 2022, will offer trading in four cryptocurrencies: Bitcoin, Ether, Litecoin and Bitcoin Cash. BlackRock also applied for a Bitcoin exchange-traded fund this month, adding to optimism that the long-sought fund would finally gain regulatory approval.
Bitcoin Cash “has become a favored alt-coin by speculative traders in the past week as money has moved into cryptoassets with better regulatory clarity,” Spencer Hallarn, a derivatives trader at crypto investment firm GSR, said over a direct message.
When it split off in 2017, Bitcoin Cash jump-started the so-called forking craze in which dozens of software-development teams sought to create money out of thin air by tweaking the original computer code and releasing coins with “Bitcoin” in their names. Since then, Bitcoin Cash has struggled to gain acceptance while Bitcoin surged in value.
Bitcoin Cash is the 19th largest cryptocurrency, with a market value of around $4.4 billion, according to data from CoinMarketCap. Bitcoin, at around $586 billion, accounts for about half of the crypto market’s value.
Bitcoin was little changed on Monday at around $30,177, just below a one-year high reached last week. Litecoin is up about 12% since the EDX announcement, while Ether has gained 7%.
