After Hash War and Choppy Markets, Bitcoin Cash Nears ETH Price
December 7, 2018 by William Peaster
Flippening? Definitely not right now, but a downward flappening may be taking place. On December 6th, the bitcoin cash (BCH) price sunk to within $20 USD of the price of ether, the “gas” of the Ethereum network. Amid a generally red market on the day, a curiously surging Bitcoin SV (BCHSV) acutely passed the ETH price, too.
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A Coin Divided, a Price to Pay
If you checked out your favorite cryptocurrency tracker this week and initially saw only the bitcoin cash price, you’d be forgiven in that moment for thinking you were looking at ether’s 24-hour data.
That’s because on the morning of December 6th, bitcoin cash acutely sunk to $114 USD, a cold $17 dollars away from ether’s $97 price tag at the time.
Of course, price isn’t everything, and cryptocurrencies’ values have generally been diving across the board over the past month. BCH’s current fall isn’t unique in that sense.
Where it is unique, however, is in the sharpness of its latest fall.
O Flippening, Where Art Thou?
Whereas BCH’s high on the year was $4,112 and the BCH/BTC price ratio was once considerably higher than the ETH/BTC ratio, sums of bitcoin cash and ether will currently fetch you almost the same amount of BTC.
On Thursday, one ETH went for approximately 0.027 BTC whereas one BCH was good for around 0.032 BTC.
The dive is also notable in the context of why the Bitcoin Cash community has, since its inception, rallied around BCH — its positioning as a technically superior alternative to bitcoin.
The verdict’s still out, and markets go through phases of rationality and irrationality, but BCH’s traction as an alternative to BTC is looking wounded in a week like this one.
Could bitcoin cash still win out? It could happen. Little is certain in this world, ever.
But the sink from $4,000 to near $100 does not a flippening make. Indeed, “the Flippening” is a commonly used phrase in the cryptoverse used to denote the hypothetical day wherein ETH overtakes BTC’s market cap. Less typically, the phrase is used to generally refer to other crypto projects trying to surpass bigger coins.
Litecoin creator Charlie Lee said in February 2018 that litecoin (LTC) would conduct a “flappening” of bitcoin cash. It was a projection that LTC would overtake BCH and a competitive riff on a “flippening” of BTC. However, it’s an anti-flappening that seems to be occurring as BCH nears the ETH price.
Flappening is, of course, rhetorically suggestive of something flapping its wings for dear life, which is what BCH and most other big-cap cryptocurrencies seem to have been doing since pronounced cryptoeconomy selloffs began in November 2018.
A Wounded Veteran of the Hash War
If bitcoin cash is wounded, then it’s been idiosyncratically wounded, insofar as it weathered the so-called “hash war” of November 2018.
The schism that birthed that war resulted from differing technical visions between Bitcoin ABC, the implementers of the most popular Bitcoin Cash client to date, and Bitcoin SV, a 2018 upstart whose backers were opposed to Bitcoin ABC’s proposed November updates to the BCH protocol.
By November 20th, the dust had seemingly settled as far as direct conflict went, with Bitcoin ABC becoming the de facto winners of the “BCH” ticker symbol and Bitcoin SV embracing a chain split.
And with that split has come a literal split in the bitcoin cash price. Before and after the hash wars, markets have slid up and down in trying to place the value of BCH and BCHSV.
Thus it was curious that on December 6th the BCHSV price surged by more than 14 percent while most of the other top 100 cryptocurrencies’ values were in the red again on the day.
Proponents will say it’s because BCHSV is fulfilling its potentials. Skeptics will say market manipulation seems to be afoot.
Regardless, if the hash war hadn’t taken place, the price of an undivided BCH would surely be down amid all the recent sell pressure in the cryptoeconomy, but its BTC ratio would still likely by at least doubly higher than ETH’s.
In the interim the game of coins is still on, and one can’t help but wonder what happens next.
What’s your take? Has BCH been one of the biggest victims in the cryptoeconomy in the second half of 2018? Let us know in the comments section below.
Images via Binance, CoinBillboard, and Pixabay
