There was a 10% increase in Bitcoin Cash (BCH) value following the completion of the reward halving event, which reduced the block reward to 3.125 BCH. With bitcoin's halving happening later this month, the cryptocurrency market is largely unchanged. Bitcoin is trading at slightly over $66,300, up 0.3% in the past 24 hours.
While bitcoin {{BTC}} remained mostly unchanged over the past 24 hours, Bitcoin Cash (BCH) experienced a 10% rise following the completion of its reward halving event, making it one of the few gainers in an otherwise lackluster market.
In the early hours of the European morning, BCH traded hands around $660, a price not seen since December 2021. The token's all-time high was $3,700 in December 2017, and it's still 80% below that. There is now a block reward of 3.125 BCH for Bitcoin Cash. The supply of newly produced currencies is reduced when the incentive for mining transactions is cut in half, a process known as halving.
According to market watchers, Bitcoin's own halving will take place on April 20. In the past, halvings have been followed by bull markets for the asset. After the first halving in 2020, prices surged by 1,000% to a record high of $69,000 around six months later.
A surge in leveraged bets on higher anticipated price volatility was evident earlier this week when open interest on BCH-tracked futures exploded to $700 million from less than $200 million in March.
In the meantime, due to the absence of market-moving factors, cryptocurrency markets have hardly moved in the last day. The CoinDesk 20, an inclusive liquidity index of key tokens (excluding stablecoins), fell 0.7% while Bitcoin rose 0.3% in the last 24 hours, trading at slightly more than $66,300.
Ethereum (ETH), BNB Chain (BNB), and Solana (SOL) all had 1% increases, whereas Dogecoin (DOT), Polkadot (XRP), and Cardano (ADA) saw losses of up to 1.2%. According to Alex Kuptsikevich, a senior market analyst at FxPro, who spoke with CoinDesk via email, traders are probably waiting for macroeconomic catalysts before taking action, which explains the present pause.
According to Kuptsikevich, "risk appetite" is being fueled by a weaker dollar and stronger stock indexes the previous day, even though Bitcoin's reluctance to climb is concerning. As a result of "accumulated overbought conditions and wariness ahead of the monthly labour market report," which is coming tomorrow, the cryptocurrency market has been underperforming.
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