Forkin’ hell! Bitcoin splits in two
Bitcoin Cash is born…
Bitcoin has split in two as a breakaway group of Bitcoin miners and developers plan to create a new network that increases its transaction capacity.
After two years of disagreements over network scalability issues, a user-initiated hard fork occurred, creating two versions. The one we know it as today still exists (BTC), and the new one, called Bitcoin Cash (BCC), was born.
Bitcoin Cash occurred because a faction of the community didn’t approve of the SegWit2x proposal, designed to increase the Bitcoin block size by 8x. SegWit will be implemented later this month.
Unsurprisingly, opinions are divided.
Some exchanges, like Coinbase and BitMEX have made it clear they will not support Bitcoin Cash; others, like OKCoin and Kraken have informed users they will list the new token.
Mustafa Al-Bassam, security expert at Secure Trading and a “reformed ex-hacker”, says: “On the whole, the fact that there is disagreement and the freedom to offer a breakaway plan is positive. While it is still a highly experimental and volatile system, the market is being allowed to determine which version of Bitcoin is more valuable – and this is an important precedent to set.”
However, Coinsource CEO Sheffield Clark says: “When we look back 30 days from now, this is essentially going to be a non-event. We have absolutely no plans to integrate Bitcoin Cash at our machines at this time.”
The situation is fluid and we’ll have to wait and see what happens over the next few weeks or months.
If this is a “non-event”, then forget I ever wrote this report.
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