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On Saturday, March 2, the valuation of bitcoin cash witnessed a significant increase, climbing over 40% within a 24-hour span to reach a peak of $451 each. This upward trend is attributed to the anticipated halving event, set to happen in 16 days, and the forthcoming 2024 upgrade, which is expected to implement an adaptive block size limit algorithm.
Bitcoin Cash Rises Sharply on Halving and Upgrade Forecast
Over the weekend, bitcoin cash (BCH) saw its value against the U.S. dollar soar by more than 40%, and over the past month, it has surged by 88%, significantly outpacing BTC’s 30-day increase. Currently, BCH boasts a market capitalization of $8.71 billion, trading at $444 per unit after briefly touching $451 in the early trading hours of Saturday. As of 9:30 a.m. on Saturday, bitcoin cash ranks 11th in trading volume among the 10,000+ cryptocurrencies over the last day.
Tether (USDT) holds the position as the most traded pair with BCH, accounting for over 53% of all BCH transactions. The South Korean won follows as the second most traded pair, representing more than 28% of BCH trades on March 2. Notably, BCH trades at a premium in South Korea, with an average price of $467.75, compared to the global average of $444 per coin. Other significant trading pairs for BCH this weekend include the USD, BTC, and USDC.
Several factors have contributed to BCH’s substantial appreciation in value over the last month, notably the imminent halving and the subsequent upgrade scheduled for May. The Bitcoin Cash network is set to undergo a halving before BTC, with the BCH halving projected to take place around April 1, 2024. Post-halving, BCH miners will see their rewards per block cut from 6.25 BCH to 3.125 BCH. In the last 24 hours, BCH miners have committed an average of 6.44 exahash per second (EH/s) of SHA256 hashrate to the Bitcoin Cash blockchain.
A forthcoming event in BCH’s timeline is the annual May fork, which aims to transition from a 32-megabyte (MB) block size limit to an adaptive block size limit algorithm. “This upgrade resolves an economic vulnerability that was introduced in 2010 and led to the BCH/BTC network split in 2017,” says BCH developer Jason Dreyzehner. He further elaborates:
The algorithm automatically adjusts Bitcoin Cash’s block size limit to reduce infrastructure costs during periods of lower usage while enabling up to a doubling of the maximum block size per year at peak growth.
This update will succeed the May 15, 2023, Cashtokens upgrade, which ushered in capabilities for smart contracts and onchain tokenization. Advocates of BCH are enthusiastic about the subsequent adaptive block size limit adjustment post the April halving event. “It’s now less than 100 day[s] until the BCH Jessica upgrade,” Mathieu Geukens remarked on X on Feb. 8. “Bitcoin Cash gets an adaptive blocksize limit algorithm, this innovation finally solves the discussions about when and by how much to change the maximum network throughput.”
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