Amid what appears to be renewed sell-off sentiment in the stock market, several of the world’s largest cryptocurrencies—including Bitcoin Cash and Monero—surged on Thursday. Nevertheless, today’s winners were outnumbered by the losers, marking a rare day of divergence in the crypto market.
According to CoinMarketCap.com, the price of Bitcoin Cash, a so-called “hard fork” of the original bitcoin, has gained over 27% within the past 24 hours. Monero, the 13th-largest crypto by way of market cap, has moved about 7% higher over that same timeframe.
Meanwhile, bitcoin was basically flat on the day. Ethereum slumped about 2.9%, and Litecoin lost more than 4%. Overall, eight out of the top 10 largest cryptocurrencies were down at least slightly on Thursday.
“The high correlation between the different crypto currencies worries me,” Goldman’s head of research, Steve Strongin, told Markets Insider. “Contrary to what one would expect in a rational market, new currencies don't seem to reduce the value of old currencies; they all seem to move as a single asset class.”
Thursday’s biggest winner, Bitcoin Cash, has emerged as an interesting option in the crypto marketplace. Launched in August, Bitcoin Cash is hard fork of bitcoin. A hard fork in the cryptocurrency world refers to a change in the rules of the blockchain infrastructure that is not recognized as valid by the older software.
In some ways, hard forks are similar to stock splits in that they are designed, in part, to alleviate barriers to entry for new users.
There have been a number of bitcoin forks, but Bitcoin Cash has become the largest by far. The altcoin is now the fourth-largest cryptocurrency in terms of total market cap. Another popular bitcoin fork, Bitcoin Gold, currently sits at number 20 on that list.
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