Bitcoin cash price prediction: Will BCH go up?
Bitcoin cash (ticker: BCH) is the crypto coin that aims to make online transactions quicker and cheaper. But what is going to happen to it? Can we make some kind of prediction for the bitcoin cash price – and what might such a prediction tell us?
Before we do that, let’s take a look at the cryptocurrency’s history. While prior performance is never any guarantee of future results, it does help us put things into context and gain some understanding that might inform a bitcoin cash price prediction.
From the bitcoin cash whitepaper
The Bitcoin Cash: Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash whitepaper explains the rationale behind developing the new cryptocurrency.
According to the site: “Bitcoin became increasingly unreliable and expensive. This was because the community could not reach a consensus on increasing the network capacity. Some of the developers did not understand and agree with [Bitcoin founder Satoshi Nakamoto’s] plan. Instead, they preferred Bitcoin become a settlement layer.”
It goes on to say: “By 2017, Bitcoin dominance had plummeted from 95% to as low as 40% as a direct result of the usability problems.
“On August 1st, 2017, we took the logical step of increasing the maximum block size, and bitcoin cash was born. Anyone who held bitcoin at that time (block 478558) became an owner of bitcoin cash (BCH). The network now supports up to 32MB blocks with ongoing research to allow massive future increases.”
Bitcoin cash: The early years
One thing to note about bitcoin cash is that it had its best times, at least in terms of its overall price, back around the time it was launched. Late 2017 and early 2018 were boom times for crypto generally and bitcoin cash, as a new and exciting cryptocurrency, caught a lot of people’s attention.
When bitcoin cash first came onto the market in July 2017, it was priced at around $400. While there were some ups and downs over the first few months, things really started to heat up towards the end of the year. On 20 December 2017, it hit an all-time high of $4,355.62, more than 10 times what the coin had been worth when it came out around five months earlier.
Those good times could not last, though, and the drop was harsh. Around a year after its record high, bitcoin cash hit an all-time low of $75.08 on 15 December 2018. This represented a drop of more than 98% over the space of 12 months. There was then some recovery, and BCH spent most of 2019 and 2020 hovering between $100 and $500. But changes were about to take place.
Bitcoin cash price history: Times of change
The first few months of 2021 saw cryptocurrency generally booming. While bitcoin cash was not able to get anywhere near the heights it had reached in late 2017, at the start of last year BCH was worth $342.98. By 3 January, it was worth $421.79.
Although there was some volatility and fluctuation, the overall movement of travel was upwards, with the coin hitting $587.89 intraday on 9 January. There was still room for improvement, though, and the following day’s intraday high of $629.80 was the best price that month, before the coin went back down to finish January at $399.77.
February’s best score was $767.51 on 15 February. While there was a fallback to a monthly close of $459.91, this was another month when the coin finished higher than it started. That pattern continued in March, with the end-of-play price of $543.24 on 31 March coming after a monthly high of $607.07 on 13 March.
April continued the pattern, but with some very bullish behaviour. The intraday high of 16 April, $1,170.73, was the first time the coin had broken the $1,000 barrier for quite a while, and the following day’s intraday peak of $1,208.59 was a monthly high. BCH then went down, but April’s closing price of $993.43 was still 83% higher than the end of March and almost three times higher than it had been at the start of the year.
Bitcoin cash’s price history – Credit: Currency.com
BCH price history: Crash and recovery?
May was a month where pretty much anything went. The monthly and 12-monthly high of $1,635.15 intraday on 12 May came as the BCH price enjoyed a sustained rally above the $1,000 mark. But then disaster struck.