Bitcoin Cash (BCH) spent long periods hibernating during “crypto winters”. Now, BCH is within one rally of the $500 range, and has outperformed in the past 12 months.
BCH traded at $465.29, showing positive demand in the past week. The coin is watched for a breakout, as it moved close to the $500-$600 range in Q1. Despite this, BCH is yet to return to four-digit prices, testing the patience of investors.
In the short term, the potential of BCH to rally may be driving slow accumulation.
What keeps BCH from rallying are the relatively low trading volumes. Even after a bullish period, BCH trading is down to around $400M per day, a relatively low level for a blue chip token within the top 20 of the largest crypto assets. A new BCH rally may depend on renewed interest in trading.
Despite this, BCH had a successful 12-month period, rising from around $120 to a peak just under $700. In this scenario, BCH turned out to be a better store of value compared to BTC, which moved from $27,000 to a current level of $62,300.
Despite controversy, BCH also seems to appeal both to newcomers and old holders, with a significant part of wallets holding for 52 weeks or longer.
Bitcoin Cash Prepares for Upgrade to Block Size Limit
In one week, the Bitcoin Cash blockchain will undergo an upgrade to establish an even more agile mechanism to carry higher network loads.
The coming update will calculate an adaptable block size limit, and adjust the network rules based on current conditions. This approach arrives after years of contested ideas on block limit, with supporters for both small blocks or unlimited blocks at all times.
The Bitcoin Cash network is not yet at an overwhelming level of usage, despite already introducing tools to build smart contracts. But the current update is setting the stage for growth and adaptability, without the need to vote at the last minute or have further discussions on block size.
BCH Tokens Moved to Exchanges
The success of BCH in bouncing from the lows also meant some traders chose to take profits. In the past months, the BCH flow to exchanges accelerated, turning above the six-month average.
According to Chainalysis research, 51.3K BCH is held on exchanges. But this is not a complete picture – BCH is flowing more toward crypto-to-crypto exchanges, and less BCH is landing on fiat-based exchanges.
For BCH, the most active pairing is against USDT on Binance, though with a riskier slippage of just $700K for a 2% slide. The Coinbase pairing against USD retains double the liquidity. BCH also relies on the Korean won for around 19% of its liquidity, becoming a more important pairing even compared to BCH/USD.
Bitcoin Cash Switches to DeFi
Gone are the days when the Bitcoin Cash network tried to steal the top position from Bitcoin, through a short-lived but dramatic mining competition. Now, Bitcoin Cash aims to become more like Ethereum or other L1 networks, and build its own decentralized finance portfolio.
The shift to DeFi happened in the past few months, when Bitcoin Cash started to increase its value locked. The DeFi sector is still in its initial stages, with under $20M locked in various projects. But Bitcoin Cash may build its own DeFi summer, following the model of Bitcoin, which now hosts tokens and some decentralized trading.
The Bitcoin Cash network still has an advantage of relatively low fees. On usual days, fees for transacting in BCH are around $0.01. Even on days of increased activity, like the latest May 5, fees did not exceed $1. At the same time, Bitcoin fees remain consistently high, with usual transactions often costing up to $30.
BCH Miners Return in the Past Month
Bitcoin Cash mining is growing in the past month, doubling the hashrate in a few weeks. As of May, the Bitcoin Cash network is mined at 4 EH/s, after the difficulty conditions became more favorable.
The Bitcoin Cash network has a permanent difficulty recalculation mechanism, instead of waiting for two weeks to adjust. This is to avoid periods of slow block production, as the network still has fewer miners compared to Bitcoin.
