Bitcoin Cash rose to a nearly two-month high today, extending recent gains as the legacy Bitcoin token reached its latest high.

The alternative protocol asset's price rose to as much as $596.65, the highest since early September, CoinMarketCap figures showed.

The digital currency has some enjoyed some notable gains over the last several weeks, climbing more than 100% since reaching a local low of less than $290 on October 9, additional CoinMarketCap data reveals.

As for what has been pushing Bitcoin Cash higher, analysts pointed to a handful of variables.

[Ed note: Investing in cryptocoins or tokens is highly speculative and the market is largely unregulated. Anyone considering it should be prepared to lose their entire investment.]

Record Bitcoin Prices

Bitcoin has risen to several fresh highs recently, climbing above $7,300 earlier today.

More than one analyst claimed that Bitcoin Cash, which is simply a fork of Bitcoin, has enjoyed gains by following its digital sibling higher.

Bitcoin Cash is "Just surfing in the wake of BTC," said Tim Enneking, managing director of Crypto Asset Management.

Korean Trading

Other analysts pointed to Korean trading, asserting that this activity was responsible driving Bitcoin Cash's price upwards.

At the time of report, the South Korean won accounted for roughly 65% of all new money flowing into Bitcoin Cash, according to leveraged digital currency platform CryptoCompare.

"Korea is leading the surge," said Sean Walsh, partner at Redwood City Ventures.

Charles Hayter, co-founder and CEO of CryptoCompare, agreed that the South Korean won appears to be playing a dominant role in Bitcoin Cash's price movements.

Walsh emphasized that the Korean market has a wealth of talented traders. He asserted that these market participants are likely taking advantage of the recent fluctuations in cryptocurrencies.

They've taken notice of the relatively long consolidation formation in BItcoin Cash this autumn, coupled with the potentially overbought BTC market. Further, there is a growing appreciation of the intrinsic value of BItcoin Cash's scalability and low transaction fees. Taken along with with Bitcoin SegWit's imminent 2x hardfork, it seems likely that significant crypto capital will rotate into Bitcoin Cash through the rest of Q4.

Marius Rupsys, a digital currency trader, also weighed in on such activities.

"There are people who can do arbitrage between Korean exchanges and Western exchanges, so Korean price have an impact on other exchanges," he emphasized.

Bitcoin's Pending Fork

Some market observers pointed to Bitcoin's upcoming hard fork as a potential reason why investors traders have been purchasing Bitcoin Cash.

"I think there is a lot of volatility lately around the upcoming bitcoin fork," said entrepreneur Marshall Swatt. "It might be pushing people towards it rather than bitcoin."

Lucas Geiger, founder and CEO of Wireline, offered a similar point of view.

"I think many of the forks from the main blockchains (bitcoin cash, and eth classic) are subject to a lot of volatility around the news of upcoming planned forks," he said. "So I think that this new volatility is related to news around the upcoming Bitcoin and Ethereum hard forks having shown successful proof of concept."