Bitcoin cash (BCH) has gained 11% over the last 24-hours even as bitcoin has declined.
Bitcoin’s price drop follows network congestion that sent transaction fees over the weekend skyward as demand for bitcoin Ordinals ramped up.
BCH, which is a spinoff of the Bitcoin blockchain, designed to be more scalable and cheaper, seems to have benefited from bitcoin’s backlog of transactions, some market observers are saying.
BCH, which was recently trading over $122, was one of the only digital assets trading in the green on Tuesday.
“Bitcoin cash is a fork of Bitcoin so the market is speculating that there will be some spillover as a result of high fees/congestion,” Arca trader Kyle Doane said in a note to CoinDesk. Doane noted that the uptick for bitcoin cash will most likely be short-lived.
The Bitcoin blockchain's flood of pending transactions over the weekend resulted in Binance, the world’s largest crypto exchange, temporarily pausing bitcoin withdrawals.
Yet Laurent Kssis, crypto advisor at CEC Capital, said that he doubts that the two are related. “I’m not confident BCH’s rise is a result of bitcoin’s network congestion as the move is not that detrimental to btc,”
Kssis added: “Sure BTC is dropping but this has been in the cards for a few days.
Bitcoin was recently trading at about $27,600, roughly flat from Monday, same time, and about where it stood at the beginning of the month. Last week, the largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization was trading near $30,000.
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Kssis predicts bitcoin cash will drop again to around $110, as the current move up doesn’t appear to have staying power.