Traders work on the floor of the NYSE in New YorkThomson Reuters
NEW YORK – Sebastian Quinn-Watson has had more than 12 cups of coffee since he woke up around 24 hours ago.
Quinn-Watson is a venture partner for a bitcoin exchange operator based in Australia. As such, he has had to stay wide awake to help the firm through the ramifications of Tuesday’s fork that ruptured the bitcoin cryptocurrency into two: bitcoin and the new bitcoin cash.
“We are in a new paradigm,” Quinn-Watson told Business Insider around 5 PM ET on Tuesday, or 6 AM Wednesday in Australia. “People have been asking a lot of questions and we expect a lot of volatility.”
He said the crypto-madness that has swept the globe is just the beginning. His firm, Blockchain Global, just re-opened its exchange, the Australian Cryptocurrency Exchange.
“We literally just re-opened the bitcoin exchange and are confirming the BCC trades over the course of the day,” he said.”Orders for bitcoin cash are exploding!”
Bitcoin cash is a fork of the original bitcoin blockchain: It’s a new software that has all the history of the old platform, but is made up of eight megabyte “blocks” instead of one megabyte blocks, making it faster.
“People are selling their bitcoin positions and buying bitcoin cash as a proposition that it is the ‘new coin’ that has more value in the future,” he said.”It’s a bit speculative.”
He said he expects to see a relatively small drop of about 10% to 15% in the price of bitcoin over the course of the next 36 hours as investors, including new market entrants, look for other opportunities.
“Money will pour into Ethereum and bitcoin cash,” Quinn-Watson said.”I think the excitement will also bring more people into the market looking to invest.”
To be sure, not everyone is looking to stay in the crypto space. Some of Quinn-Watson’s hedge fund clients in Singapore completely cashed out of their bitcoin holdings because of the activity.
Bitcoin is currently trading down about 4.15% since market open.
Get the latest Bitcoin price here.
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