Bitcoin and bitcoin cash pause after strong weekend rally

Cryptocurrencies were a little lower on Monday, taking a breather after a modestly positive weekend.

Cryptocurrency prices have declined in the last 24 hours

Bitcoin, the biggest of the digital currencies by market capitalisation and average daily trade, enjoyed a three-day rally before falling on Monday.

After hitting a month-low of $5,898 on 14 August, bitcoin has rallied strongly, adding 22% to stand at a near one-month high on Sunday of $7,335.

Bitcoin cash

Bitcoin cash – a hard fork of bitcoin, which some enthusiasts believe is now closer to the original principles of the original bitcoin – won some strong momentum on Saturday after results published late on Friday of stress tests into its network’s transaction ability.

The “community” driven tests processed millions of minimum fee transactions within a 24-hour period to test the capacity and scalability of bitcoin cash’s blockchain network. The tests handled 2.1 million transactions which caused no surge in fees.

During the weekend, the price of bitcoin cash – from Thursday’s close to Sunday’s close – rose nearly 21%.

Price round-up

Here’s a round-up of the price moves in the top 10 digital currencies on Monday morning at 11am [London time]:

• Bitcoin -1.3% at $7,217
• Ethereum -3.3% at $287.35
• Ripple -3% at $0.33
• Bitcoin cash -2.5% at $628.78
• Eos -1.9% at $6.41
• Stellar lumens -4.3% at $0.22
• Litecoin -2.3% at $64.71
• Tether -0.1% at $1
• Cardano -2.6% at $0.10
• Monero +0.1% at $121.44