The bitcoin gold price has been surging this week, in part due to the addition of BTG trading pairs to cryptocurrency exchange giants Bithumb and Bitfinex.
As CCN reported, bitcoin gold got off to a rocky start after forking away from the main bitcoin blockchain in early November. Beset by DDoS attacks, a third-party wallet scam, and questions about its developer premine, the bitcoin gold price languished below $200 for most of November.
However, on November 20, the bitcoin gold price began to surge. Within six hours, the bitcoin gold price rose from $120 to $341 during a flurry of trading, and — following a dip back to $230 on November 22 — the bitcoin gold price continued to climb during the latter half of the week. On Friday, bitcoin gold rose another 35%, briefly raising it as high as $420 on cryptocurrency exchange Bitfinex. At present, bitcoin gold is trading at $384 and has just under $500 million in daily volume, according to CoinMarketCap data.
The rally appears to be predicated on increased support from established cryptocurrency services and exchanges. Earlier this week, for instance, Freewallet created the first dedicated mobile wallet for bitcoin gold.
But perhaps more importantly, the world’s two highest-volume cryptocurrency exchanges — Bithumb and Bitfinex — have added bitcoin gold trading pairs and have begun accepting BTG deposits within the past two days. While not a guarantee of long-term viability, being listed on these exchanges provides a cryptocurrency with significant liquidity.
At the time of writing, Bitfinex had not even been accepting BTG deposits for a full day, but the coin had already accumulated more than $76 million in volume at that exchange, second only to Bittrex’s $211 million.
CoinMarketCap has not begun tracking BTG’s Bithumb pairs yet, but Bithumb reports that it has exchanged a staggering $400 million during its first day on the platform, bringing total BTG volume close to $1 billion.
Nevertheless, it is important for investors to temper their expectations. Most bitcoin gold holders have likely not access their airdropped coins yet, so they may view this rally as an opportunity to take their “bitcoin dividend”. Moreover, it is unclear to what extent — if any — the rally is the result of an orchestrated pump, and to what extent it represents organic demand.