Bitcoin cash surges 40 per cent in single day

Bitcoin cash, the offshoot of Bitcoin, shot up on Friday after it became clear that the alternative digital currency could achieve its goal of speeding up transactions.

Bitcoin cash rose 40 per cent from Thursday's close of $460.53 to briefly hit $655 last afternoon, according to CoinMarketCap, the highest since bitcoin cash touched $756.93 on 2 August, the day after bitcoin split into bitcoin and bitcoin cash. (See: Bitcoin faces split, clone digital currency a possibility)

The volatile surge was, however, even greater when considering bitcoin cash hit an intraday low of $293 on Thursday before shooting up to $460.53, according to CoinMarketCap.

Bitcoin cash ''miners'' demonstrated on Wednesday that the digital currency could support an eight megabyte block, as against the original bitcoin's one megabyte.

Blocks form part of the blockchain technology behind digital currencies like bitcoin that limit transaction speeds.

According to Charlie Hayter, CEO of digital currency information website CryptoCompare, the eight megabyte block "has proven that bitcoin cash is working."

Hayter added that with gains in bitcoin cash's price it had become more profitable and easier for miners to mine bitcoin cash versus bitcoin, contributing to further gains in the price of the offshoot currency.
 
Bitcoin investors at the time of the 1 August split should have received equal amounts of bitcoin cash.

Meanwhile, as the value of the Venezuelan currency the Bolivar collapses, the country's citizens are turning in huge numbers to Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies as hedges against currency collapse.

According to new data from investing.com however, it is not just Venezuelan citizens turning to cryptocurrencies as fiat currencies collapse, the investment portal researching the top 10 countries accessing cryptocurrency across its platform found that citizens of countries with failing currencies in every part of the globe seemed to be turning to crypto for investment and wealth protection even as fiat currencies struggled.

The five countries with the worst-performing currencies of 2017 - Venezuela, Argentina, Belarus, UK, and Egypt, made it to the top ten list.