Investing.com – Bitcoin fell on Monday, after surging above $6,300 for the first time in its nine-year history while Bitcoin gold added to losses.
On the U.S.-based Bitfinex exchange, bitcoin fell to $6082, down $65.1, or 1.06% after hitting an all-time high of $6345. The latest surge in bitcoin saw its market cap rise above $100 billion for the first time.
The record high in bitcoin comes just a week after a split or fork of the underlying software supporting the bitcoin network, created an offshoot coin called Bitcoin gold.
The fortunes of bitcoin gold, however, pale in comparison to that of bitcoin as the newly created cryptocurrency continued to edge lower, falling more than 80% since its trading debut last week to an all-time low of $108.30 on Monday.
Nevertheless, proponents of bitcoin gold argue that the newly created cryptocurrency serves an important purpose as it seeks to decentralize the Bitcoin network, which many believe has become inaccessible to normal users wishing to “mine” bitcoin.
For the initiated, Bitcoin miners are users who help maintain the system by validating transactions stored in “blocks” on the network in exchange for bitcoins. Using high-powered computer hardware, miners validate blocks by solving a complex “puzzle” – the more powerful the computer the faster its ability to solve the puzzle.
Application-specific integrated circuits, or ASICs cards - capable of mining bitcoin 50 times faster than traditional video graphics cards – have been rapidly adopted by the lucky few bitcoin miners able afford the super-fast hardware, leading to a concentration of bitcoin miners.
The top six mining pools by global processing power are Chinese, make up more than two-thirds of computational power or hashrate on the bitcoin network, according to blockchain.info.
Bitcoin gold, an ASIC resistant cryptocurrency, was created to solve the problem of mining monopolies that dominate the bitcoin network.
“Bitcoin Gold is the brainchild of Jack Liao and is launching as a hard fork of Bitcoin”, said prominent Bitcoin developer Jimmy Song. “The idea [of Bitcoin gold] is to give mining back to the users who can start using CPUs and GPUs to mine.”
Bitcoin cash, meanwhile, mimicked bitcoin’s move higher and eventual retreat, rising to a 5-week high of $521.46 on Sunday before pairing gains. Bitcoin cash last traded at $453.30, up 0.07%.
Ethereum, the second largest cryptocurrencies by market cap, added 0.68% to $306.46.