Bitcoin Cash price doubles amid U.S. crypto crackdown, expert says gain won’t be long term

Bitcoin Cash, the spin-off of the world’s largest cryptocurrency, gained over 108% in the last seven days as investors hope the Bitcoin-based altcoin receives the same categorization as commodities by U.S. regulators. But one market expert told Forkast that this won’t last long.

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Fast facts

• Bitcoin Cash rose 15% to US$222.46 in the 24 hours to 2 p.m. in Hong Kong on Tuesday, according to CoinMarketCap data. Another Bitcoin hard fork, Bitcoin SV, also rose nearly 50% in the past week. It is currently at US$37.23 after gaining 5% in the last 24 hours.

• Bitcoin Cash and Bitcoin SV typically trade in low volumes, said Benjamin Stani, the director of business development and sales at crypto trading platform Matrixport.

• “I would say it’s mostly sentiment related — both are not tokens that are widely used and generally considered coins from the past cycle,” said Stani, clarifying that there was no fundamental upgrade on Bitcoin forks to lead to long-term growth.

• “The narrative I’m hearing is that Bitcoin forks obviously should get the same treatment as Bitcoin from the Securities and Exchange Commission, i.e. be considered commodities,” Stani told Forkast via Telegram message.

• The U.S. SEC has been aggressively policing local crypto entities on the basis that most cryptocurrencies could be seen as securities.

• Bitcoin Cash was created in 2017 as a hard fork to Bitcoin to increase the block size on the network to allow faster and more affordable transactions. A hard fork is a permanent update to a blockchain protocol that makes the new network backward-incompatible with previous blocks.

• Bitcoin Cash is also among the four cryptocurrencies that are offered on EDX Markets, the new compliance-focused crypto exchange backed by Wall Street giants such as Citadel Securities, Fidelity Investments and Charles Schwab.

• Last week, Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell said that cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin have “staying power” as an asset class.

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