There might be trouble brewing for cryptocurrency investors as popular digital currencies have cratered across the board this week. For example the Ethereum price has fallen 13% overnight and 16% over the last week.
While still the most popular cryptocurrency by far in Bitcoin lost 11% of its value overnight to sell for US$5,867 (A$8,075) as at 11.35am AEST.
The falls in Bitcoin are mirroring the falls in more traditional investment markets, with the likes of Australia's benchmark equity index the S&P /ASX200 (ASX: XJO) down close to 12% since its recent peak at the start of September.
The Bitcoin price falls are also sending its spin-off in Bitcoin Cash even lower, with it now down a shocking 17% in 24 hours and more than 27% over the last week.
On Thursday morning, Bitcoin cash is selling for US$449 (A$618) according to Investing.com, with the price weakness potentially caused by several different factors.
Analysts and commentators are largely attributing the big falls in cryptocurrencies to the upcoming 'hard fork' in Bitcoin Cash.
Bitcoin Cash itself was created in August 2017 after a 'fork' or spin off from the original Bitcoin currency itself.
The cash version itself was adopted to speed up transaction processing times as the currencies became incredibly popular over 2017.
Now Bitcoin Cash itself is set to "fork" into a new distributed ledger and trade administration platform which apparently could lead to the creation of a new coin, which is also a derivative of the original Bitcoin.
Overall, it's the confusion and opaqueness surrounding the cryptocurrency world that is probably hurting sentiment especially just prior to another 'fork' that will split the original blockchain ledger further and create more uncertainty for digital currency believers.
Whether or not you believe in the future of digital currencies, one thing for certain is that they won't pay you any dividend income as they don't earn any cash themselves.
Unsurprisingly, in Australia many investors prefer the certainty of dividend shares like Commonwealth Bank of Australia (ASX: CBA), over the likes of Bitcoin cash.
