Investing.com – The rally in Bitcoin resumed, as the digital currency hit all-time highs on Tuesday, while rival Bitcoin Cash fell to its lowest in more than week.
On the U.S.-based Bitfinex exchange, bitcoin rose to $4,569.2, up $232.6 or 5.36%, surpassing its previous high of $4,489.1.
The surge in bitcoin saw its monthly gains for August reach nearly 70%, boosting its market cap to $75.40 billion, highlighting the elevated demand for the largest cryptocurrency by market cap.
Bitcoin is one of the top performing assets, boasting gains of more than 400% over the past year.
In other crypto-currency trade, Bitcoin Cash fell $29.51, or 5%, to $551.71, moving further away from its peak of $935.50 while Ethereum, added 7.49% to $369.28.
Bitcoin Cash was created as a result of a ‘civil war’ in Bitcoin, after some members of the bitcoin community rejected software upgrade SegWit2x – a proposal adopted by the majority of bitcoin users aimed at speeding up transactions on the bitcoin network – following concerns that SegWit2x fails to adequately address bitcoin’s scaling problem.
Bitcoin transactions are limited to 1-megabyte every 10 minutes - or seven transactions per second. This compares to 2,000 per second for Visa and means that at peak times bitcoin transactions can take hours to be fulfilled, inhibiting the currency.
Bitcoin Cash seeks to increase the block size to 8-megabytes whereas SegWit2X proposes moving transaction data outside of the block on a parallel track with plans to increase bitcoin’s block size later this year.
To stay on top of the latest moves in the crypto-space, be sure to check out: https://www.investing.com/crypto/