The first quarter of 2019 has ended and things are starting to look much better for digital assets this year. Bitcoin cash (BCH) prices touched all-time highs for 2019 during the end of Q1 and the network’s overall strength has improved a great deal since the fork last year.
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Bitcoin Cash Action Q1 2019
Q1 is finished and the BCH chain and market value have both improved over the last three months. For instance, the price of each BCH touched its 2019 all-time high of $193 on April 2. In fact, bitcoin cash markets have gathered a higher percentage (+47.6% / 30-day) than many other cryptocurrencies that have been experiencing decent gains during the last month of Q1.
The most dominant pairs traded against BCH over the last three months include USDT, BTC, ETH, USD, KRW, and JPY. According to Bitcoin.com Markets, the top exchange that traded the most BCH in Q1 was the Chinese cryptocurrency trading platform Lbank. The trading platform Lbank, however, has trading volume data that is hard to verify. If Lbank was to be removed from the equation, Binance would be the market leader in Q1 as far as BCH trade volume is concerned. Over the last three months, there’s also been a lot of accumulation as the network’s unspent transaction output (UTXO) set size has grown immensely.
In fact, the UTXO set size has grown to levels not seen since 2017 and historically this is an indicator that a bull run will take place in the near future. The BCH chain is also inching toward there being one year left until the next reward halving. Depending on the hashrate speed, the expected halving for BCH will be around April 8, 2020, at around 1 a.m. UTC. The date could be closer if the BCH network’s hashrate continues to climb at the pace it has been growing this quarter. After the November blockchain split, the overall hashrate dropped below one exahash per second in the middle of December.
From Jan. 1 until now, the BCH hashrate has gradually increased to 1.8 exahash. Q1 also shows a steady diversification of BCH miners in 2019 as there are now roughly 14 known mining pools on any given day. Additionally, 16 percent of the BCH network consists of unknown miners which could represent various smaller pools. The top BCH mining pools in 2019 include Bitcoin.com, Btc.com, Antpool, Btc.top, and Viabtc.
BCH Programmers Have Set Developments to High Gear
Q1 statistics detail that BCH nodes have declined since December 2018 from over 4,000 full nodes to a total of 1,507 public nodes currently running on the Bitcoin Cash network. Bitcoin ABC has 821 nodes, Bitcoin Unlimited 660 nodes, XT nine nodes, Bchd seven nodes, and Flowee has two nodes this week. BCH development has been in high gear over the last three months with a big focus on representative tokens, smart contract functionality, and various opcode features. The network is also adding the highly acclaimed Schnorr signatures protocol this May, showing the BCH protocol will have enhanced privacy and scaling features. Moreover, privacy for BCH has already improved a great deal in Q1 with the introduction of Bchd’s Neutrino light client and the Cashshuffle protocol implemented into Electron Cash.
The BCH chain saw a decline in transactions per day after the November split, but over the last three months, this metric has been climbing. Post-fork also shows millions more BCH have moved since the split compared to BSV according to Blockchain.com statistics. Moreover, BCH price has outperformed BSV as well since the fork, as BSV has lost more than 30 percent of its value since Jan. 1. Another gradual increase in 2019 has been BCH transactions (txns) per day climbing back to 17-25,000. There’s also the dwindling down of the 21 million max supply as the current BCH supply in circulation is now only 17.7 million BCH.
2019 has been a positive year for BCH supporters as the price and network strength has improved. Prices are not nearly as crazy as they were at the end of 2017, but BCH development has spiked significantly, with numerous new apps released over the last quarter. Platforms released in 2019 include Menu.cash, Bchgallery, Cashshuffle, Badger Wallet, Neutrino, Taskopus, Lazyfox, Nakamoto Game, Memopay, Ifwallet, Cinema.cash, Paybutton, and Fountainhead Cash. Overall the BCH community continues to move forward as the protocol sees steady development, brighter markets, and a stronger network this year.
What do you think about the price of Bitcoin Cash and the network performance in Q1? Let us know what you think about this subject in the comments section below.
Image credits: Shutterstock, Charts.Bitcoin.com, Satoshi Pulse, Coin Dance, and Bitinfocharts.com.
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