The interest and valuation of Bitcoin rose exponentially, reaching over $17K but the cryptocurrency took hit, falling on Tuesday after Coinbase, the leading platform for buying and selling bitcoin in the United States, said it was rolling out support for rival bitcoin cash.
“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 said in a blog post on Tuesday. In a subsequent tweet, however, Coinbase revealed that buying and selling would likely not be available until Wednesday. Bitcoin cash trading was also suspended on GDAX until Wednesday noon ET. As the demand became high this year, Coinbase has struggled several times to keep up.
On Aug. 1, Bitcoin cash split off from the original bitcoin after a group of developers chose to try and improve bitcoin transaction speeds and costs. Some investors have complained about the difficulty, the long waiting periods, and the fees involved in bitcoin transactions. The majority of developers who supported the original bitcoin were unable to reach an agreement this fall on their own upgrade proposal, SegWit2x.
Bitcoin cash rose more than 70 percent Tuesday evening to a record high of $3,813.70, according to CoinMarketCap. The original bitcoin was down about 10 percent to near $17,074 according to Coinbase, after earlier dropping as low as $15,005.