May 23, 2018 at 12:42PM
via Business Insider
Markets Insider
- Bitcoin cash fell more than 12% to below $1,000 on Wednesday.
- The cryptocurrency recently increased its block size fourfold to support more transactions.
- Follow bitcoin cash in real-time here.
Bitcoin cash sank more than 12% Wednesday, falling below $1,000 for the first time since April.
The fourth-largest cryptocurrency by market cap is now trading near $997 per token, even after its recent fork which increased its block size fourfold.
"The Bitcoin Cash network has been displaying some erratic behaviour over the past few weeks, which has contributed to the downwards pressure on prices," Iqbal Gandham, managing director for eToro, a British crypto firm, told Business Insider in an email. "Despite a recent surge, it’s now moving towards the head and shoulders pattern we’ve seen since last year."
Last week, bitcoin cash upgraded its software with a patch known as Bitcoin ABC, which increased the size of transaction blocks on the network from 8mb to 32mb. The upgrade also removed the Segwit protocol, short for segregated witness, a process by which the number of transactions in a block can be increased by moving certain signature data from transactions to the end of the block.
Bitcoin cash has been accused of misleading investors by piggy-backing off the bitcoin name. While the new cryptocurrency includes the history of the original bitcoin's transactions up until the split, since the fork, the two currencies are unrelated except for their shared history and name.
Vocal bitcoin cash supporter Roger Ver, who owns bitcoin.com via an LLC registered at a Marriott resort on St. Kitts, and refers to the original bitcoin as "bitcoin core," has appeared on numerous internet talk shows, including the conspiracy-theory site InfoWars, to promote the coin.
"For over a year Bitcoin cash has been fighting the battle to become the 'default' bitcoin, a battle which traditionalists are not keen to lose," Gandham said. "This lack of clarity, has repeatedly called into question the authenticity of Bitcoin cash, and until that is resolved the direction of price movement will always carry an air of uncertainty.”
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