Open interest in Bitcoin Cash has not been this strong since May 2021, when its price was almost 2.5 times higher.
In anticipation of next week’s second-ever Bitcoin Cash (BCH) halving event, the cryptocurrency has surged 9.06% in the last 24 hours and is now trading at $574.84.
According to statistics collected by NiceHash, traders are actively hedging their bets in preparation for the BCH halving on April 4.
There was a liquidation of $190,140 in short positions and $211,870 in long holdings on March 28. According to CoinGlass data, open interest (OI) in perpetual contracts for Bitcoin Cash futures peaked at $708.75 million on the same day. This represents an increase of 18.26% in twenty-four hours and 165% over the previous seven days.
In May 2021, when BCH hit its all-time high of $1,399, OI hit $684.12 million, the last time it came close to this amount.
On the other hand, futures open interest was $63.29 on the same day in 2020, just before the first-ever BCH halving on April 8, 2020.
Back then, miner payouts were half as much, at 6.25 BCH instead of 12.5 BCH. But it seems like miners are using this as a signal to ramp up their mining activity in preparation for the impending halving. The Bitcoin Cash hash rate has quadrupled in the last week, according to X user “DavidShares” and his 17,900 followers.
A proof-of-work blockchain’s hash rate is the sum of all the compute power required to mine and process transactions.
Nevertheless, according to CoinMarketCap statistics, Bitcoin Cash is still well behind its all-time high of $4,355, which it achieved in December 2017, even if Bitcoin is approaching its fourth halving on April 21 among record highs.
Because Bitcoin Cash briefly used a different method to modify its mining difficulty in 2017, speeding up the block generation time, the BCH halving happens significantly sooner than the Bitcoin halving.
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