Investing.com – Bitcoin traded higher on Thursday, following a dip to a nearly two-week low earlier this week.

On the U.S.-based Bitfinex exchange, rose to $4,199.9, up $73.8 or 1.79%, but remained a few hundred dollars shy of its most recent record high of $4,489.1. At current prices bitcoin has a market cap of about $70 billion.

The rise in Bitcoin comes two days after it fell to a nearly two-week low of $3,600, before pairing gains, amid fears that the cryptocurrency was set for a period of consolidation.

Despite its recent slump from all-time highs, Bitcoin remains one of the top performing assets over the year, boasting gains of about 400%, buoyed by growing demand from Asia.

Earlier this year, the Japanese government fully legalized Bitcoin as an official currency, expanding the digital currency reach to a wider range of users, as major retailers backed the new law.

Meanwhile, fell 3.08% to $630, after rallying to an all-time high of $935.50 on Saturday while , added 1.92% to $322.60.

Bitcoin Cash was created as a result of a ‘civil war’ in Bitcoin, after some members of the bitcoin community rejected software upgrade SegWit2x – a proposal adopted by the majority of bitcoin users aimed at speeding up transactions on the bitcoin network.

Proponents of Bitcoin Cash believe that SegWit2x fails to adequately address bitcoin’s scaling problem.

Bitcoin transactions are limited to 1-megabyte every 10 minutes - or seven transactions per second. This compares to 2,000 per second for Visa and means that at peak times bitcoin transactions can take hours to be fulfilled, inhibiting the currency.

Bitcoin Cash increases the block size to 8-megabytes whereas SegWit2X moves transaction data outside of the block on a parallel track with plans to increase bitcoin’s block size later this year.

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