BCH Ecosystem Grows With May 4X Hard Fork Less Than Two Weeks Away

This week there’s a lot going on within the Bitcoin Cash (BCH) ecosystem as markets have been on fire and infrastructure continues to grow. Over the past six months, the price of BCH is up over 139 percent, and the price has jumped 13 percent higher over the last seven days. At the moment the value of BCH hovers just above the $1,500 USD price region, and traders have been swapping over $1.2Bn worth of bitcoin cash over the last 24-hours.

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BCH Markets Up Over 139% Over the Past Six Months

Bitcoin cash markets have been on a roll for a few weeks now as the cryptocurrency continues to see gains. At the moment, it’s less than two weeks until the upcoming May 15 hard fork, which will up the block size to 32 MB, and re-enable some OP_Codes as well. This week lots of action has been taking place across both BCH markets and the increase of BCH infrastructure as well. Presently the BCH chain is over 7,500 blocks ahead of the Bitcoin Core (BTC) chain. Additionally, BCH is operating at 15.21 percent of BTC’s difficulty and it is 3 percent more profitable to mine BCH today. Market action shows the top five exchanges today swapping the most BCH are Okex, Bitfinex, Upbit, Houbi, and Bithumb.

BTC is the most traded currency swapped for BCH on May 3rd capturing 39 percent of all trades. This is followed by tether (USDT 22%), USD (18%), Korean won (16.2%) and the euro (1.5%). The Korean won has made a noticeable increase with BCH pairs over the past week, and volumes from Bithumb and Upbit reflect these metrics. Currently, there are 17,107,588 BCH in circulation which holds a market valuation of over $25Bn USD.

Growing BCH Infrastructure and Positive Community Sentiment

BCH infrastructure and support has increased significantly as multiple project and announcement were made this week. Blockchain Wallet announced that BCH balances are now visible in iOS mobile wallets. This week the platform Memo got some upgrades and has been seeing a bunch of traction. Following this, a new social media app that works similarly to Memo was launched yesterday called Blockpress. News.Bitcoin.com took Blockpress out for a test flight and talked with its developer yesterday.

A bunch of automobiles branding the bitcoin cash symbol were found across the globe this week, with a cool BCH Jeepney in the Philippines. Moreover, BCH is trending in mentions on the social media platform 4chan as well. BRD wallet released its ‘Augustus’ version which now fully supports bitcoin cash and in-wallet trades. Lastly, Bitpay developers upgraded the firm’s Bitcore-lib-cash protocol which adds support for the May 15 hard fork for new OP_Codes, updated carrier size, and bigger blocks.

Overall Bitcoin Cash proponents are excited about the future of the BCH economy and its growing development environment. The hard fork is getting close and supporters are also looking forward to the next upgrade which should add more robust features to the BCH network. Right now the 32 MB block size, the increased default datacarriersize, and re-enabled Satoshi OP_Codes are just three things pending activation. Alongside this, the construction of UTXO commitments, changing the Difficulty Adjustment Algorithm (DAA) so it improves BCH block times while also adding a PID control algorithm, enabling binary contracts, and the block propagation protocol Graphene is currently under development.

What do you think about the bitcoin cash ecosystem’s growth these past few weeks? Let us know your thoughts on this subject in the comments below.

Images via Reddit, Pixabay, and Satoshi Pulse.

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