Reawakening eCash (XEC): What This Coin Could Do
Over the weekend, Bitcoin (BTC) preserved some of its gains, standing above $46,300. Most altcoins stalled, after regaining higher positions.
For lagging altcoins, the past two days brought unprecedented developments. One of the assets to rally was eCash (XEC). XEC rose to a peak at $0.00016 after adding more than 17% in 24 hours, on near peak volumes of $1.12B. On Monday, XEC erased some of the gains and returned to $0.00011.
This time, the XEC price move did not happen with usually low trading volumes, which can drive short-term rallies on weekends.
XEC was also among top weekend gainers, and ranked the 11th most active asset on the Binance International exchange.
What is XEC: BCHA Rebranded
XEC is the rebranded ticker of Bitcoin ABC, which itself is a version of Bitcoin Cash (BCH). Bitcoin ABC followed the vision and development of the ABC team headed by Amaury Sechet, and briefly wanted to take over the BCH ticker. The team is dedicated to building a new type of network, with an avalanche-based consensus. The ABC team also implements continuous difficulty adjustment to prevent periods of low difficulty when big mining farms can take all the blocks.
Toward the end of 2021 the team decided on a 1:1,000,000 split and to change the BCHA ticker to XEC. Thus, the asset is actually an altered fork of BTC and was claimable by BCH owners as well, similar to other hard forks. XEC follows the BTC halving schedule, awarding 6.26M coins in each block.
The split was intended to have an asset with a more intuitive unit, avoiding the need to write out hard to read decimal prices for BTC.
But the chief idea of XEC was to have a low-priced asset for everyday transactions, fulfilling the vision of electronic cash.
Is XEC a Speculative Asset
At sub-penny prices, XEC can easily perform 10X growth or have surprising rallies. Despite its low visibility at rank 60 based on market cap, XEC can be tapped for sources of short-term growth, as well as longer-term speculation for the price suddenly outperforming.
XEC has a supply cap of 21 trillion, and has issued currently close to 19 trillion tokens, as its network lags behind coin production, but is close behind Bitcoin. The supply of XEC is also curtailed by old wallets that may never seek their BCH balances or tap XEC, since a fork also reflects the history of Bitcoin holdings. Thus, even though large, the supply of XEC will always have around 3M tokens locked.
The XEC community may also be different from Bitcoin maximalists or the supporters of competing forks. XEC went the route of e-cash, while BTC remained a store of value, and BCH continues to exist as a less-active altcoins.
Is XEC Accessible
Most major exchanges, including Binance, support XEC, as it is linked to a major hard fork. The listing of the ticker was automated, as well as the token split.
Wallets are an issue, as the asset uses ElectrumABC. The Electrum wallet is a tool that can be customized for coins and has been used by hard forks and new projects for years. However, it poses a risk of having tainted links. It is best to always download Electrum versions from official sources, to avoid a wallet with tainted private keys that can steal the coins.
XEC is less accessible compared to BCH or even BSV, but still a short-term trading opportunity. So far, eCash and its rebranding avoid the battles with both BCH and the BSV team, aiming to strike out as an independent project.
Network Update Coming in May
The eCash protocol will go through a planned update on May 15. While the upgrade is mostly technical and will not affect the asset’s performance, it may cause increased social media hype.
In the short term, XEC may rise on trading sentiment, easily expecting a 3X from current positions. The prediction itself may boost market activity.
XEC remains highly volatile, and the rally may be cut short in the new week. Overall, demand and awareness of BTC forks has fallen, as no other asset has managed the feats of the original network.
XEC remains a mined coin, recently doubling its mining activity. However, eCash only shows 0.6 EH/s, with more than 210 EH/s for the Bitcoin network. The eCash blockchain is thus more vulnerable to mining attacks, and uses a second layer through staking nodes to assure no malicious miner achieves double-spending.
The eCash network sets aside 8% of all new coins produced for the Developer Fund, taking a vastly different approach to BTC or BCH. The network is still compatible with Antminer S19 mining rigs, and may attract miners or pools during times of profitability.
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