On Tuesday, bitcoin has effectively split in two. When deciding the future of the first and by far the biggest cryptocurrency out there, the community didn’t come to an agreement and two competing strands of bitcoin emerged as a result.
Bitcoin is currently traded at around $2715. Bitcoin Cash is reported to be worth $439, more than a two time increase from the original value.
What needs to be changed?
In a nutshell, the number of simultaneous transactions. Bitcoin was never designed to overtake fiat money. The system behind it can only process 7 transactions per second. Compare to 2000 for Visa. With ever-increasing popularity of bitcoin, that grew more than 200 times since the end of 2012, operations can take up to several hours. Bitcoin Cash aims at solving the problem by increasing the block size from 1 MB to 8 MB.
The future of two currencies
It is yet too early to discuss the future of Bitcoin Cash in all seriousness. The newly created cryptocurrency demonstrated outstanding results by soaring 116% in the very first day of its existence. However, this price is purely speculative. The currency will cost anything if only the community demonstrates further support. By far, bitcoin seems to be unaffected by its newly created and relatively successful competitor.
