News

Over the past few weeks, there’s a lot going on within the bitcoin cash (BCH) ecosystem. Just recently businesses and service providers have been working towards changing their infrastructure to the new BCH address format. Additionally, the bitcoin cash environment got more support from organizations like the Bitclub Network and the merchant Kimchi Socks.

Also read: Japan’s DMM Bitcoin Exchange Opens for Business With 7 Cryptocurrencies

The Bitcoin Cash Ecosystem Shows Enormous Growth In Just Six Months

The bitcoin cash blockchain is trucking along after close to six months since it forked from the bitcoin core blockchain. At the moment, the BCH markets are holding strong after most cryptocurrencies fell in value alongside bitcoin core markets. Currently, the price per BCH is around $2,750 and global markets are trading roughly $1.1Bn worth of 24-hour volume. Bitcoin cash has the sixth highest trade volume today, and the most traded currency with BCH is bitcoin core (BTC) by 53 percent. This metric is followed by the USD which commands 14 percent of the global volume. The BCH chain is operating at 15 percent of the core chain’s difficulty and is 0.1 percent more profitable to mine. The median transaction fee for a typical 226-byte transaction is still only $0.02 for the miner’s fee.

Colored Coins and Colorful Socks

This week bitcoin cash supporters got some good news as a few more organizations have decided to support the BCH roadmap. For instance, earlier this week a team of developers announced they were creating a counterparty platform dedicated solely to the BCH chain. This means that in the future users could create ‘assets or colored coins’ that are backed by the security of the bitcoin cash blockchain.

Another announcement made this week was revealed the Kimchi Socks company as the business announced it would be accepting bitcoin cash for purchases. Not only will the sock company be accepting BCH for goods the firm plans to have a bitcoin cash sock pre-sale. Kimchi Socks states to its fans on Twitter:

Bitcoin Cash is now a payment option on Kimchi Socks — Soon the Bitcoin Cash Socks pre-sale will be up for orders.

Kimchi socks has started the BCH socks sale and pre-orders for socks are 50 percent off until January 31. The company details that only 1500 garments will be available for the pre-sale.

The Bitclub Network Switches to Bitcoin Cash Because the Bitcoin Core Network “Has Been a Huge Burden to Deal With”

Another announcement made this week concerning the BCH economy was made by the mining pool outfit the Bitclub Network. The pool explains that the bitcoin core blockchain has become a “huge burden to deal with” these days. According to the company, the chain has been extremely slow and expensive which is costing the business and its club members “tens of thousands of dollars each day in transaction fees.”

“Since the start of the year the average cost for a new member paying their $99 USD sign up has been around $17 in fees — We have seen times with $25+ and even some as high as $40 just to send Bitcoin for an invoice,” explains the Bitclub Network.

We will continue to mine bitcoin and pay all mining earnings in bitcoin — However, we will no longer be accepting bitcoin for payments and all commissions will also be paid in bitcoin cash as well.

Bitclub will change its business model to BCH on February 1st the company explains. This means members will have to purchase BCH from an exchange to sign up for Bitclub’s pool contracts. At some point, the company could move back to the core network if developers happened to come up with a scaling solution, but for now Bitclub will maintain operations using bitcoin cash because it is considerably cheaper for everyone involved.

“It’s our hope that a scaling solution happens on the Bitcoin network sometime this year, and if it does then we may consider moving back, but right now the Bitcoin blockchain is simply unusable for our business needs and we are excited to make this move over to Bitcoin Cash because its fast, cheap, and very liquid,” the company emphasizes.

Overall the past six months have been good for bitcoin cash and its supporters. Since the beginning of August the currency has climbed in value exponentially. In addition, development has been happening regularly between the last successful hard fork and the recent address serialization change. Many wallet providers have been updating to the new address format and a lot more will convert on January 14. Further, BCH proponents have witnessed the flurry of support from large businesses like Coinbase, Blockchain.info, Bitpay, Bitstamp, and many others over the past few months.

What do you think about the progress bitcoin cash has made over the past six months? Let us know in the comments below.

Images via Shutterstock, Kimchi Socks, Bitinfocharts, and the Bitclub Network.

Have you seen our new widget service? It allows anyone to embed informative Bitcoin.com widgets on their website.