The surge in Bitcoin Cash’s mining profitability and high trade volume propelled its price to near $1,000 over the weekend. Bitcoin Cash (BCH), an offshoot of the legacy Bitcoin blockchain,​ touched a high of $1091.97 on August 19, 2017 before sliding down to $600-700 levels.

The debate about Bitcoin’s block size has finally ended (for now) with the hard fork in Bitcoin’s blockchain resulting in two versions of Bitcoin—Bitcoin (BTC), which upgrades with SegWit to a 2-megabyte (MB) block size, and Bitcoin Cash (BCH), which has a larger 8-megabyte block size. (See also: What's Bitcoin Cash and Where the Heck Did It Come From?)

During the pre-split phase, the uncertainty regarding the currency's block size started to heat up, and investors and traders took a cautious approach with many waiting on the sidelines for clarity. Now that the August 1 hard fork has taken place, investors and traders have gained confidence after observing the post-hard fork trend for a couple of days. "The willingness to hard fork and make tough decisions has been lacking in Bitcoin. I look forward to a future where BCH continues to optimize, add features, and scale. BCH is positioned as the new silver to Bitcoins "gold", but the future is open and who knows how high it can go,” said Jeff McDonald, Vice President, NEM Foundation.

Source: FinFix

Since its emergence, Bitcoin Cash has seen a lot of activity on the price front. Soon after the split, Bitcoin Cash saw its price double to about $400 levels and it soon touched a high of $747. However, Bitcoin Cash’s price has remained range-bound in the past couple of days, mostly hovering around $300 levels. However, Bitcoin Cash broke the lull by bouncing back during the weekend.

E​ddy Travia, CEO and co-founder of Coinsilium, said, “It is still early to appreciate the fundamentals, an early price rise may be the result of increased short term awareness, but BCH will need solid developments and use cases to sustain its price level in the long term.”

Miners reportedly mined the first 8MB block last week, and the graph showing the daily Bitcoin Cash profitability vis-à-vis Bitcoin shows that Bitcoin Cash is currently a lucrative option for miners. Miners tend to focus on virtual currencies which are profitable at the time given the resources utilized in the process.

“The mining difficulty in Bitcoin Cash has slowly been decreasing since the split occurred. Bitcoin cash is now more profitable to mine than Bitcoin due to both a lowering of the Bitcoin Cash difficulty and its price,” said Alejandro De La Torre, VP Business Development, BTC.com.

Source: coin.dance

Wang Chun, the owner of F2pool, told Investopedia, “I bought a lot of BCH, that is a fact.” F2pool at times accounts for 10% of the Bitcoin mining hash rate and 30% of the Ethereum hash rate.

Bitcoin Cash’s trade volume topped that of Bitcoin’s on August 18 and 19. The daily volume of Bitcoin Cash surged from 74,46,05,000 on August 17 to more than four times on the next day, according to coinmarketcap.com.