Bitcoin Cash Up 30% in 3 days: What You Need to Know About the Upcoming BCH Fork

TL;DR

• Bitcoin Cash has experienced an 30% price surge over the past 3 days.
• The BCH hard fork is scheduled for November 15th, the reason for the fork is due to a disagreement between NChain and Bitcoin ABC regarding the new upgrade.
• So far, the creation of a new altcoin was not announced, but the possibility of one appearing still exists.

BCH experiences a 30% price surge

The last weekend has brought a lot of activity for the cryptocurrency after Coinbase and Binance announced their support for the impending Bitcoin Cash (BCH) fork. The fork itself is scheduled to take place on November 15th. However, the price surge surrounded BCH almost two weeks before the event. This behavior is very similiar to past significant Bitcoin forks: A classic “sell on the news” event.

Bitcoin Cash is currently the fourth largest cryptocurrency with a market cap of $9.7 B and a price of $560 per coin at the time of writing.

As mentioned, the price surge was likely caused by an impending hard fork. For BCH, hard forks are not an unusual event, as they are used twice per year to activate new protocol upgrades. However, while earlier upgrades did not attract too much attention, this one has, and BCH supporters are still wondering what will happen on November 15.

About the upcoming BCH hard fork

The reason why this is an issue is the fact that an Australian blockchain group called NChain does not agree with new changes to BCH. The new changes were proposed by Bitcoin ABC, which is a development consortium that focuses on Bitcoin Cash. Since two groups want two different things out of BCH, the upgrade will likely split BCH blockchain into two independent chains, or a hard fork.

Soon enough, major cryptocurrency exchanges announced their support for the hard fork. Ledger, the hardware wallet, had also approved their BCH fork support. They will disable deposits and withdrawals just before the hard fork on November 15 and will support the dominant chain after the chains split. The dominant chain will be the one with higher levels of stability and more hashing power.

One thing to note is that this doesn’t necessarily mean that there will be a new coin after the fork was performed. While numerous cryptocurrencies forked out of Bitcoin, including BCH itself (on the 1st of August 2017), the process doesn’t require the creation of new digital currency. This is yet another decision that has to be made in the following days.

So far, crypto exchanges have been very neutral regarding the possibility of a new forked coin. Their statements say that they will support a new currency if it emerges, but so far, there is no indication. It should be noted that the possibility remains, and there are ten more days during which anything can change.

For now, BCH enthusiasts are left to wait and wonder what will happen next. While NChain and Bitcoin ABC had weeks to reach a consensus, they did not manage to do so as of yet. Even though there are ten more days before the fork, not much is expected to change.