TL;DR: Notoriously fickle cryptocurrency markets turned double-digit green in 24-hour trading for Bitcoin Cash (BCH) after major announcements concerning the project’s future made headlines. At least for the moment, speculators appear bullish on the news of a BCH soft fork developer funding plan and further progress toward more privacy tools for the world’s ranked number 4 coin.

Bitcoin Cash Leads All Top Ten Coins by Market Cap in 24-Hour Trading

As of publication, BCH was up slightly more than 10% in 24-hour trading, itself not normally newsworthy or all that significant. Why it be might of interest has to do with events within the peer-to-peer electronic cash ecosystem, which include a soft fork funding plan for Bitcoin Cash developers and a steady stream of BCH-oriented applications making important strides.

The Infrastructure Funding Plan for Bitcoin Cash (IFP), released by influential mining pool operator Jiang Zhuoer of BTC.TOP, gave the skeletal outline of a proposal, an agreement in principle, between other important mining pool operators such as Jihan Wu of Bitmain, Haipo Yang of ViaBTC, and Roger Ver of Bitcoin.com. The four argued essentially for a soft fork to redirect 12.5% of the BCH block reward over a 6-month trial period, effectively spreading the fee across SHA-256 mining algorithm-based coins. Funds gathered as a result would then be reserved for BCH protocol and application developers.

To enforce the temporary rule change, beginning May 15th, 2020, the IFP also proposed to orphan blocks from miners and pools who do not follow — what’s anecdotally known as a coercive soft fork. The projected windfall in doing all of the aforementioned is estimated near $6,000,000, to be housed and distributed through a corporate structure based in Hong Kong. Debate about the IFP’s merits or lack thereof have been vigorous, with concerned members of the BCH community ranging from openly hostile to skeptical to enthusiastic and cautious. Amendments and alternatives continue to make their way through social media.

Advisable to Not Draw Definitive Conclusions

It’s advisable to not draw definitive conclusions about what broader markets think of the IFP by simple price movements in either direction, but even proponents told CoinSpice on background they expected short term pain in this regard as specifics were chewed on and digested. It’s also important to point out there is still more than 3 and a half months before the IFP is to be enacted, an eternity in crypto time. Literally anything can happen. But, for now, the price response appears to be welcoming.

Besides the IFP, however, Bitcoin Cash applications are making progress on notable fronts. Its early privacy tool iteration CashShuffle, for example, has steadily given way to more work on CashFusion, which purports to offer greater anonymity in transacting BCH. And while CashFusion isn’t live just yet, lead project developer Jonald Fyookball told CoinSpice it looks to be shipped within months. The idea has gained lauds from across crypto tribes.

CashFusion in early testing has already performed nearly 1,700 transactions over 6,500 BCH, and all signals appear to be positive. Its value is due to not being integral to the coin’s protocol. In other words, privacy-specific projects such as Monero have often lingered in adoption for at least the reason users cannot choose to not be private. While immediately counterintuitive, what this means is a tool like CashFusion integrated into wallets could effectively give BCH users the opportunity to conduct private transactions when they wish and public transactions when desired — a kind of cash-like flexibility previously unknown to the cryptocurrency world.

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DYOR: CoinSpice is your home for just spicy crypto things. We’re not affiliated with any cryptocurrency project or token. Each published piece is intended for information purposes only, not investment advice and not in the hope of impacting speculative markets. There are plenty of trading sites and coin-specific advocacy journals out there, we’re neither. CoinSpice strives for rigorous accuracy in our reporting. Information presented here is contingent usually on a host of factors, and the ecosystem moves fast — prices change, projects change, and at warp speed. Do your own research.

DISCLOSURE: The author holds cryptocurrency as part of his financial portfolio, including BCH.