© Reuters. Bitcoin lower as Bitcoin Cash hits 2-week high

Investing.com - The price of the digital currency bitcoin was lower on Tuesday, while bitcoin offshoot Bitcoin Cash hit the highest levels in two weeks boosted by a spike in trading volumes in Korea.

On the U.S.-based Bitfinex exchange, was trading at $5,589.40 by 09:28 AM ET (01:28 PM GMT), having opened at $5,764.80.

Bitcoin hit a peak of $5,876.90 on Sunday, the highest level in its nine year history, before pulling back slightly. Bitcoin started the year near $1,000 and at current prices has a total market capitalization of around $94 billion.

Meanwhile, was last at $361.77, having earlier hit an intra-day high of $397.00, the most since October 4.

The move higher appeared to have been driven by increased trading volumes on Bithumb, one of the largest exchanges in South Korea.

Bitcoin cash has a total market cap of around $6 billion at current prices, making it the fourth most valuable cryptocurrency.

Elsewhere in cryptocurrency trading, , the second biggest cryptocurrency by market cap after bitcoin, was down 3.28% to $323.41 a day after a hard fork on its blockchain was implemented without incident.

The Byzantium hard fork was enacted on Monday, implementing a number of improvement protocols designed to improve the platform. Byzantium is part of a planned package of improvements that has been in development since 2015.