• Bitcoin Gold (BTG-USD) is putting on a show today with gains of over 40% and massive trading volume
• This is likely due to large volumes of transactions on a small, regional exchange in Asia
• Bitcoin Gold prices saw similar movement throughout early 2022, also with large volume spikes

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The Bitcoin Gold (BTG-USD) network is dropping some jaws today with its first major price swing in nearly two weeks. After retaining a steady floor at around $20, the BTG crypto is showing signs of life, with a boom of 41% to start the week. It looks like this explosion could be thanks to large volumes of BTG transactions on a small, regional exchange based in Asia.

Bitcoin Gold might not be the largest network with its name. But, it’s one of the most favored spinoffs of the esteemed Bitcoin (BTC-USD) blockchain. When Satoshi Nakamoto created the Bitcoin chain in 2011, they established the fundamental grounds by which all other blockchain projects would be built. In its wake, smart contracts are becoming more robust and layer-2 networks are leading to more scalable and useful dapps. Yet Bitcoin remains largely the same.

This has been a heel to developers who want to build on Bitcoin. Ultimately, it led several projects to fork from Bitcoin in order to pursue their own interests. Bitcoin Gold is one such project. In 2017, Bitcoin Gold developers decided to move from Bitcoin in order to create a richer network prioritizing scalability and a breadth of dapps. With DeFi as its primary focus, Bitcoin Gold offers dapps ranging from centralized and decentralized exchanges to wallets and payments systems.

Bitcoin Gold Prices Boom as Volume Surges in Asia

Now, Bitcoin Gold is in the spotlight as one of the fastest-gaining cryptos of the week thus far. Curiously enough, on a day that’s proving uneventful for the network, volume is surging in one corner of the globe.

Prompting the gains for BTG is a humongous increase in trading volume. Indeed, while BTG usually sees between $5 million and $10 million in volume per day, today is a different story. Over $188 million in BTG is swapping hands thus far, an increase of 3,400% over yesterday’s volume.

The volume can be traced back to trading in South Korea on an exchange called Upbit. A flagship exchange for Korean crypto traders, Upbit is one of the few exchanges in the nation abiding by strict regulations taking hold of the crypto market. Now, Upbit volume is driving Bitcoin Gold’s rally, accounting for $104 million of the coin’s total trading volume today.

Meanwhile, experts point to other factors helping to lever up BTG prices. As Forbes reports today, volume of the Tether (USDT-USD)-BTG trading pair is at its highest since last summer.