Since its arrival in the crypto world, the value of BCH has fluctuated quite a bit, with lows around the $200-mark and its most recent high, peaking briefly at $1097.71 earlier today. The market cap followed suit with a peak of $15 billion. At the moment of peaking, trade volume for BCH was over $4.7 billion.

BCH hit the world of crypto with a bang; within 24 hours of its creation, it rose to a high of around $800 per coin. However, after this brief honeymoon period, BCH quickly fell into a slump between the $200-$300 range for about two weeks. The future looked dim.

A Bitcoin Cash Gold Rush: What Has Caused the Latest Spike?

This weekend saw a high demand for BCH in South Korea. Bithumb, a South Korean exchange, recently recorded a BCH trading volume of approximately $669 million, although there is speculation that this number may be inflated.

There has also been a significant uptick in BCH mining. This was triggered by the mining of an 8-megabyte BCH block. This was significant because it was a demonstration that BCH was fulfilling its intended purpose of having faster transactional capability than the so-called "legacy Bitcoin", whose blocks are limited to one megabyte each.

This is the thing that really seems to be driving BCH's value up. Currently, BCH is 21% more profitable to mine than BTC.

When it Comes to Blocks, Size Matters

BCH's larger block size enables faster transactions and higher transactional volume on its network than Bitcoin. Both cryptocurrencies utilize a blockchain protocol. That means that each transaction is stored inside a "block".

BCH and BTC blocks hold public records (called a "blockchain") of every transaction that has ever occurred on either network. Transactions are recorded in their respective blocks in the order that they happen, and the blocks are then stored in the blockchain (in the order that they happen).

Having a small block size means that transactions take a long time to store in the blockchain. Bitcoin Cash appeared as the result of an attempt to increase Bitcoin's block size. Rather than running software that would have increased the legacy Bitcoin's block size, a majority of Bitcoin miners chose to take actions that would create an entirely new currency based on Bitcoin's protocol.

The Future of Bitcoin Cash

Bitcoin is due for an upgrade soon--the long anticipated "Segregated Witness" (SegWit) will soon activate. If everything goes as planned, SegWit will increase Bitcoin's block size and Bitcoin's scalability issues will be fixed (or at least temporarily alleviated). However, if the upgrade doesn't meet expectations, it is possible that more users could be turning to Bitcoin Cash, and its value could continue to climb against the legacy Bitcoin, which has taken a dip in recent days.

Most people that originally held BCH have subsequently "dumped" their coins onto exchanges, which could account for the two-week slump in its value. Now that the initial dump has passed, it is even more possible that BCH's recent gains in value could be here to stay.

One possible outcome of all of this could be--could be--that SegWit will increase the profitability of mining Bitcoin. If both of these coins are being mined at a high level of profitability, who knows what could happen.