Bitcoin Cash and The Gatekeeper Position

The middleman position Bitcoin enjoyed for so long, for the first time, has gone away in a whole country it seems. The more currencies that have a direct exchange to fiat, the less of a market share BTC will have.

I'm invested in Bitcoin Cash as I thought it was an underpriced asset but I wasn't expecting this rally in price. Although the mechanism for this to occur was already in my plans this is a huge unexpected development.

Most of this is secondary to a single exchange. BIthumb in South Korea, the biggest exchange there. They recently got so many customers that they had to open desks to attend to customer questions in person.

They provided an option for people to use Bitcoin Cash as a route to get into and out of the exchange. As fees are currently a lot lower than for Bitcoin it was a no-brainer for a lot of people. Not just that. As they started to use it more it increased in value. The gatekeeper position has always been maintained by Bitcoin. It seems at least in south korea, not anymore. Soon other cryptocurrencies will follow.

This means that indirectly you have South Korea now supporting Bitcoin Cash. In one of my posts previously I mentioned how middlemen always take profit and the position of gatekeeper is the best position to have.

You have something similar happening with Binance. A relatively recent exchange in China. The token they funded and use as a mean of exchange exploded to 20x its initial value.

I recently responded to a post by @dragosroua about Why Bitcoin Mania Is NOT Tulip Mania That in the early days of banking every single bank had their own currency. This is most likely the normal development you would expect in this space:
Exchanges using their own token that becomes more valuable as people inside use it more. This was already in effect in some niche places but never at this scale.