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Yesterday, as expected, the Bitcoin digital currency split into two – it forked. You can read about the reasons for the split here.
In the run-up to the fork, nobody knew what was going to happen. Would the cryptocurrency exchanges melt down? Would the fork be called off at the last minute? In the event, the split did happen, and it didn’t cause any major upsets.
The split officially started at around 8.20 ET (1.30 BST) when a group of miners – that’s the people who run the complicated algorithms to validate Bitcoin transactions and in return are paid in new Bitcoins – switched their work from the old Bitcoin, now called Bitcoin Core, to the new currency, Bitcoin Cash. This new coin runs on new, incompatible software that changes the rules about how the coin’s network functions.
It actually took longer for the first block of Bitcoin Cash to be created than expected, because there were only a small number of miners running the new software. After some hours, people started to question whether the new currency was a bust. But then about six hours after the miners started their search for a new block, the first block of Bitcoin Cash was mined. It contained 6,985 transactions carried out in the new coin.
Four more blocks followed through the evening. Bitcoin Cash was officially in business, and it was now a network.
The creation of these first blocks convinced some of the digital currency exchanges that it was worth launching Bitcoin Cash on their exchanges, so it is now trading live on bourses such as Kraken, TheRockTrading and OKCoin.
But there are still some that are not carrying Bitcoin Cash. The world’s most popular cryptocurrency exchange has rejected the new coin, saying their systems cannot support it without a major overhaul. That means their customers won’t be credited with the new Bitcoin Cash, although Coinbase says: “If this decision were to change in the future and Coinbase was to access Bitcoin Cash, we would distribute Bitcoin Cash to customers associated with Bitcoin balances at the time of the fork. Coinbase would not keep the Bitcoin Cash associated with customer Bitcoin balances.”
Although it has been spurned by Coinbase and other exchanges, Bitcoin Cash could still go on to be a success. If it turns out to be a better currency that Bitcoin Core, miners may rally behind it and people will want to buy it or trade in it.
At the time of writing, Bitcoin Cash is valued at $439.56, having launched at just over $200.
This compares to $2,733.17 for the old Bitcoin Core currency.
