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Aug 1, 2017 Bitcoin Cash splits off
On August 1, 2017, part of the community split from Bitcoin to create Bitcoin Cash, a new coin with bigger blocks.
- Date
- Aug 1, 2017
- New coin
- Bitcoin Cash
- Cause
- Block size debate
What happened
The split came out of years of argument about block size. The new chain kept Bitcoin’s history up to the split and then went its own way, so everyone who held Bitcoin at that moment also received the same amount of Bitcoin Cash.
Bitcoin itself continued unchanged. The episode became a reference point for how a blockchain can fork, and for how a network’s users decide which version is the real one.
Why it mattered
The fork is a case study in how Bitcoin settles disagreements. See Bitcoin in 2017.
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