It was a massive red day for the world’s largest cryptocurrency as the price of the digital currency dropped from $17,249 to $14,212 between 4:18 – 4:38 PM PST, according to Coinbase, the world’s leading cryptocurrency exchange platform. In other words, Bitcoin plunged more than $3,000 in 20 minutes. Just last Sunday, Bitcoin was trading at an all-time high of $19,800.
The crash came in just minutes after Coinbase announced that customers on their platform will be able to buy, sell and receive Bitcoin Cash on their platform. “Sends and receives (of Bitcoin Cash) are available immediately,” Coinbase said in an official blog post. “Buys and sells will be available to all customers once there is sufficient liquidity on GDAX.”
The introduction of Bitcoin Cash to Coinbase saw the price of the forked version of Bitcoin skyrocket from $3,100 to $8,499 from 5:20 – 5:23 PM PST – a mind-boggling 174.16% increase in price in just 3 minutes. The price eventually corrected itself, but this goes to show the amount of influence that Coinbase has on a coin.
Source: Coinbase
Bitcoin Cash forked from the original Bitcoin blockchain on the 1st of August after a group of developers decided to create a coin that has a faster transaction speed and requires lesser transaction fees. The difference between the two coins is evident – with a block size limit of 8MB compared to Bitcoin’s measly 1MB, Bitcoin Cash has a much faster transaction speed, as it is able to process over 2 million transactions a day. In comparison, Bitcoin can only manage around 250,000 transactions on a good day. However, as far as the users of the two cryptocurrencies are concerned, the difference on the frontend when using either currency is nearly unnoticeable.
Back in July, Coinbase also announced that all customers that held a Bitcoin balance at the time of the fork will receive an equal amount of Bitcoin Cash. “Your Bitcoin Cash balance will reflect your Bitcoin balance at the time of the Bitcoin Cash Fork, which occurred at 13:20 UTC, August 1, 2017,” Coinbase said.
At the time of writing, the price of Bitcoin resides at $16, 577, while its forked counterpart sits at a humble but promising $3,774.
