Bitcoin cash has rallied this week,outperforming other top cryptocurrencies.

Bitcoin cash has surged recently, climbing upwards of 100% since Monday morning and leaving other top cryptocurrencies in the dust.

This digital currency, a fork of the original bitcoin, skyrocketed to $324.57 today,CoinDesk price datareveals.

At this point, it was up roughly 94.4% from its Monday low of$166.93 and 102% year-to-date, additional CoinDesk figures show.

In addition, the digital currency was trading at its highest point since roughly mid-November.

[Ed note: Investing in cryptocoins or tokens is highly speculative and the market is largely unregulated. Anyone considering it should be prepared to lose their entire investment.]

Fundamental Drivers

Some analysts pointed to fundamentals as fueling these gains, including asharp increase in bitcoin cash futures trading on Kraken subsidiary Crypto Facilities, which was reported by CoinDesk earlier this week.

Another factor that was cited as potentially pushing bitcoin cash higher was the launch of the digital currency'sSimple Ledger Protocol, which allowsdevelopers to create new tokens that can be traded on bitcoin cash's blockchain.

A third development is the news that website Bitcoin.travel now allows users to book flights using bitcoin cash.

Follow The Leader

However, other market observers provideda different narrative, claiming that bitcoin cash merely followed its digital sibling, the original bitcoin, higher.

"Bitcoin started moving and only then other coins followed," said digital currency investor and trader Marius Rupsys.

In other words, "bitcoin is leading the whole crypto industry."

Lance Morginn, cofounder, chief executive officer and director of digital currency analytics platform Blockchain Intelligence Group, offered a similar perspective.

"Bitcoin is acting as the anchor currency and can be credited for the initial price pop for bitcoin cash," he stated.

"From my perspective, it looks like the traders have hopped on to BCH given its greater momentum, as they can leverage BCH more than BTC."

Tim Enneking,managing director ofDigital Capital Management,also weighed in on bitcoin cash's sharp gains.

"Truth be told, there is probably no rational explanation for a movement of this scale, other than the generalized market upswing and FOMO," he stated.

Disclosure: I own some bitcoin, bitcoin cash and ether.

Read more:

Bitcoin Cash Has Nearly Doubled Since Monday - forbes.com