Bitcoin is trading down 5.78%, at $2,715, after word that bitcoin cash, another version of the cryptocurrency, has started to go live.
Bitcoin’s rival Ethereum is spiking on the news, up 9.15%, at $224 an ether.
Two years of disagreements about how to scale bitcoin came to a head on Tuesday, the deadline for a decision.
So-called core developers want to limit the size of the blocks that make up bitcoin’s network to protect it from hacks, but miners want to make the blocks bigger to improve its speed.
The deadline’s passage lead to a fork, which the bitcoin exchange Coinbase describes as a “change to the software of the digital currency that creates two separate versions of the blockchain with a shared history.”
What emerged was a bitcoin rival called bitcoin cash, bucking a proposed solution called SegWit2x.
"Bitcoin cash basically came out of nowhere," Charlie Morris, the chief investment officer of NextBlock Global, an investment firm with digital assets, previously told Business Insider. "A group of miners who didn't like SegWit2x are going to opt for this new software that will increase the size of blocks from the current 1 megabyte to 8."
Bitcoin holders will see their holdings double, but that doesn't mean the value will double. The decline in bitcoin will most likely equal the price of bitcoin cash, according to Morris, because bitcoin cash will initially draw its value from bitcoin's market cap.
Bitcoin is up 190% so far this year.
