The cryptocurrency market has been on one of the best runs since 2017. Bitcoin has rallied to hit the $5,000 level before a brief rollback took it to $4,700. However, it has since regained its momentum and currently trades just above $5,000. Litecoin is up nine percent in the past 24 hours to trade just shy of $90. EOS hit the $5.5 mark after a bullish run, with Ethereum currently trading at $163, up 77 percent in the past two months.
However, Bitcoin Cash has been the undisputed leader of the current bull run.
The Unsung Hero
The currency has been on one of the best runs ever, doubling its price in the span of three days. On Tuesday, April 2nd, BCH was trading at $168. It had ranged between $155 and $170 for the previous two weeks. It started the week slow on Monday, trading at $167. The daily volume stood at $460 million.
However, everything was about to take a turn for the best for the currency. On Tuesday, the currency made rapid gains, shooting up 28 percent to close the day at $215. The trading volume also tripled to hit $1.35 billion by end of the day.
And it wasn’t done just yet. On Wednesday, the currency picked up where it had left off, gaining an incredible 58 percent. It closed the day at $340, its highest price so far this year. In fact, this is the highest that BCH has traded since November last year when the Bitcoin SV hard fork led the market to a plunge. BCH has been unable to pick itself up from the fork, up until now.
The volume has also shot up tremendously. While just three days ago it stood at $460 million, it went up to $4.2 billion on Wednesday. Huobi Global continues to be the biggest contributor to the BCH trading volume with $420 million, a 10 percent contribution. Binance, LBank and Upbit follow suit with upwards of $200 million each.
However, the BCH momentum has slowed down a bit and at press time, the currency was trading at $310. Earlier, it had dipped to $292, but it quickly rebounded to trade once again above $300. The volume has also come down slightly to stand at $4 billion.
Following the Leader?
So, why has BCH skyrocketed in the past few days? While there are factors within the BCH ecosystem that have boosted the price, some experts seem to believe that it’s just following the general tone set by the leader, Bitcoin. Speaking to Forbes, crypto trader and investor Marius Rupsys stated that BCH has BTC to thank for its momentum.
“Bitcoin started moving and only then other coins followed,” he told the business publication.
Lance Morginn, co-founder of crypto analytics firm Blockchain Intelligence Group shared the opinion. He stated:
Bitcoin is acting as the anchor currency and can be credited for the initial price pop for bitcoin cash. From my perspective, it looks like the traders have hopped on to BCH given its greater momentum, as they can leverage BCH more than BTC.
While this may be true, BCH has also been greatly boosted by an explosion in the volume of BCH futures contracts at Crypto Facilities, the London-based crypto derivatives provider. The startup was acquired by U.S exchange Kraken earlier this year, and this has provided a turnaround. Previously, clients were almost exclusively interested in BTC and ETH futures. However, after the acquisition, Crypto Facilities got exposed to Kraken users who were also interested in other altcoin futures.
Speaking to crypto media outlet CoinDesk this week, the startup’s head of indices revealed that Bitcoin Cash futures had shot up 500 percent in the past month. Litecoin futures have also seen increased interest since the turn of the year, he revealed.
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