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Bitcoin has hard forked – 8MB blocksize introduced

Bitcoin has split into two in an event known as a “hard fork”. There are now 2 separate bitcoin blockchains, and an additional crypto called bitcoin cash (BCH)

On July 20, 2017, the bitcoin miners voted, 97% in favour, on the Bitcoin Improvement Proposal (BIP) 91. The proposal, by Bitmain Warranty engineer James Hilliard, was to activate Segregated Witness (SegWit).

Some members of the bitcoin community felt that adopting BIP 91 without increasing the block-size limit would simply delay confronting the issue and that it favoured people who wanted to treat bitcoin as a digital investment rather than as a transactional currency.They announced implementation of Bitcoin Cash as a hard fork for August 1. It inherited the transaction history of the bitcoin currency on that date, but all later transactions were separate. Block 478558 was the last common block and thus the first Bitcoin Cash block is 478559.

From now, you buy or mine one or the other. The market will determine the success and value, but it seems bitcoin cash will be easier to mine, and thus be worth rather less. Initial wallet support for BCH is limited at best! Don’t download the first wallet you find and import your precious bitcoin private keys, you might be exposing your BTC to villains. HODL! (for now).

If you owned 1 BTC on July 31st, you now own 1 BTC and 1 BCH. If you don’t, your broker/exchange is pulling a fast one, ’cause they do!