The price of bitcoin swung wildly on Wednesday morning after Coinbase, the largest bitcoin exchange in the United States, announced on Tuesday that it was now offering bitcoin cash, an offshoot of the most popular cryptocurrency that was “born” from a hard fork in August. "Sends and receives are available immediately. Buys and sells will be available to all customers once there is sufficient liquidity on GDAX. We anticipate that this will take a few hours," Coinbase posted on its official blog.
Bitcoin’s price plummeted to as low as $15,800, reported Bitstamp and to as low as $16,484 on Coinbase, a 12 percent decline. Bitcoin was trading at $17,115 as of 10:54 a.m. HK/SIN on Wednesday. In contrast, bitcoin cash skyrocketed over 60 percent on the news, to near all-time highs of $3,450.
Fiat Currency Movements
The dollar found some support on Wednesday on hopes that the U.S. tax bill would be passed in the coming day after the bill passed in the House of Representatives on Tuesday. The dollar was trading at 112.93 yen, up 0.04 percent, with traders eyeing last week’s high of 113.75 as the next area of support. This point may not be quickly forthcoming, however, as traders look towards the Bank of Japan policy meeting which will end Thursday and may end with an announcement for curbing economic stimulus, a policy eluded to by BOJ Governor Haruhiko Kuroda last month.
The dollar was slightly lower against the euro and the pound, but it gained against the Australian dollar, trading up 0.05 percent to 0.766.