Investing.com – Bitcoin was roughly unchanged on Monday, a day after surging to $5876.90, its highest level in nine-years amid bullish sentiment.
On the U.S.-based Bitfinex exchange, bitcoin fell to $5,706.6, down $5.6, or 0.10%.
Bitcoin recovered from early session losses after falling to $5,470 as investors attempted to lock in profits from the recent rally that has seen the popular digital currency surged nearly 90% from its mid-September slump.
The recent rally was also supported by an uptick in demand as traders anticipated the anticipation of a hard fork in Bitcoin creating an offshoot Bitcoin Gold, which would be freely distributed to current holders of Bitcoin.
On October 25, Bitcoin Gold will split off from Bitcoin to create an ASIC resistant cryptocurrency which seeks to ease the away from the current mining monopolies present in Bitcoin.
In other cryptocurrency news, Bitcoin Cash mirrored bitcoin’s move lower, trading roughly flat at $314.65. Bitcoin Cash’s market cap of $5.26m pales in comparison to bitcoin’s $94.92bn.
Ethereum, the second largest cryptocurrencies by market cap, lost 0.83% to $334.24 after the latest upgrade to Ethereum’s blockchain protocol – Byzantium – went live earlier today. The upgrade is designed to enhance the network’s privacy, scalability and security.