With less than 24 hours to go before August 1st 12:00 GMT, the whole community waits for the potential Bitcoin network split. The most likely outcome is that world’s largest cryptocurrency (Bitcoin currently commands a $45B market cap) will split into two separate blockchains: the original BTC, and the new BCC being promoted by BitcoinCash.org.
Nothing of this scale has even been attempted before. When Ethereum split in July 2016, its market cap was only $1B, so the stakes were relatively low.
Each currency will not only have its own network, it will also sport its own price … but this isn’t like a stock split. The new markets will need to figure out the price of the new currency relative to BTC itself, and on the Chinese exchange ViaBTC, it’s been attempting to do that for the past week. As of this writing, the future BCC price is at 1700 CNY, which is roughly $250, about 1/10 of the BTC price of $2700. It’s very probably that the young currency will be receiving a lot of attention over the next few weeks.
Will BTC lose a hand as a result of this climactic lightsaber battle? That remains to be seen.