Bitcoin splits in 2

Bitcoin power brokers were unable to come behind a single solution that would have preserved a unified cryptocurrency by Tuesday morning's deadline. As such, the digital currency has officially forked and split in two: bitcoin cash and bitcoin. Miners have been able to mine for bitcoin cash since this morning. But the first bitcoin cash was reportedly mined at about 2:20 PM, according to Coindesk. "There seems to be some technical issues that might be slowing it down, but yes, the fork has happened," Peter Borovykh of Blockchain Driven, a blockchain technology company, told Business Insider earlier on Tuesday. Miners are the folks who solve complex computer problems using computers to unleash cryptocoins into the market. It took a couple hours for miners to unlock the first bitcoin cash coins. "It seems as if people over-estimated the mining power, or the support from miners, hence it is taking far longer than most expected, Iqbal Gandham, UK Managing Director at eToro said in a statement sent to Business Insider just before the split. Bitcoin was the first digital currency built on blockchain technology, in which transactions are independently verified by the network without the need of a middleman like a bank. Bitcoin cash is built on the same blockchain network as bitcoin, but the new software increases the size of the "blocks" that make up the network to allow it to process more information.

Then bitcoin cash came along. The solution is a fork of the bitcoin system: It's a new software that has all the history of the old platform — bitcoin cash blocks, however, will be 8 megabytes.Bitcoin cash came out of left field, according to Charles Morris, however, a chief investment officer of NextBlock Global, an investment firm with digital assets, To be sure, only a minority of bitcoin miners and bitcoin exchanges have said they will support the new currency.Investors who have their bitcoin on exchanges or wallets that support the new currency will soon see their holdings double, with one unit in bitcoin cash added for every bitcoin. But that doesn't mean the value of investors' holdings will double.

Because bitcoin cash will initially draw its value from bitcoin's market cap, it will most likely cause bitcoin's value drop by an amount proportional to its adoption. Bitcoin was already trading down by 5.78% at $2,715 on Tuesday following word that bitcoin cash had gone live. Morris told Business Insider that bitcoin cash was trading in the futures market for about $200 to $400 last week, suggesting that's the range it would fall in during regular trading. Kraken, a bitcoin exchange, tweeted Tuesday morning that it was experiencing delays getting bitcoin cash to show on user's accounts.

"Please note," the exchange said, that bitcoin cash "balances have not been credit yet." It added that it was "working to credit as soon as possible." Numerous exchanges have said they won't back bitcoin cash.

"In the event of two separate blockchains after August 1, 2017 we will only support one version," David Farmer, the director of Biz Ops at Coinbase, a cryptocurrency exchange, wrote in a blog post. "We have no plans to support the bitcoin cash fork." Coinbase has served nearly 9 million customers across 32 countries, according to the firm's website. The firm has enabled the exchange of over $20 billion worth of digital currency.

But just because some big players won't get behind it doesn't necessarily mean bitcoin cash will be a dud or that it couldn't eventually usurp the original bitcoin. Miners may rally behind bitcoin cash if it turns out to be the better digital currency.

Source: Bloomberg Pro Terminal

Trader - S. Fuchedzhiev

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