A little after 5:20 AM my time (Arizona), Bitcoin underwent a fork. Some are debating whether it was a "hard fork" or just a "fork", but I won't really get into that here.

At the time Bitcoin was trading for just over $2800 per coin, then right around the time of the fork, Bitcoin dropped roughly $120 down to just under $2700 per coin.

Since that time Bitcoin has basically rallied back and made up most of those short term losses.

Steem had a similar price reaction.

Steem dropped all the way down to $1.07 around the time of the fork, but since that time has rallied all the back and then some. It is currently sitting at $1.33.

What happened exactly?

Well, as expected (at least within the last couple days anyways), Bitcoin forked into 2 separate chains.

Bitcoin and Bitcoin Cash.

Bitcoin Cash didn't start running immediately as there were some delays for a couple hours but it appears blocks are up and running now.

Owners of Bitcoin should start to see an equivalent number of Bitcoin Cash start showing up in their wallets.

Unless of course they left their Bitcoin in Coinbase or on some other exchange that stated they would not support Bitcoin Cash.

However...

There is one big caveat coming out today that most probably didn't realize.

Coinbase (via a spokeswoman) has come out and stated this:

"If the decision (to not recognize Bitcoin Cash) were to change in the future and Coinbase was to access Bitcoin Cash, we would distribute Bitcoin Cash to customers associated with Bitcoin balances at the time of the fork. Coinbase would not keep the Bitcoin Cash associated with customer Bitcoin balances."

Cool!

Good on you Coinbase!

I am sure a lot of customers were left wondering what your plans were for that Bitcoin Cash balance.

How is Bitcoin Cash doing?

After hitting highs over $400 early in the morning, Bitcoin Cash is now sitting near it's lows at $218 per coin at the time of writing.

A chart of the activity can be seen here:

So far close to $12 million dollar volume has changed hands.

Not surprisingly, it appears that Bitcoin Cash seems to mostly be under selling pressure at this point.

Where do things go from here for Bitcoin Cash?

That is the 64k dollar question.

Any time people get something basically for free the tendency would be to cash it out, one would think. Especially since there is no guarantee Bitcoin Cash will still be up and running a year from now, or even one month from now.

In fact several higher ups in the industry believe just that. According to them, Bitcoin Cash will be a distant memory a couple months from now and we will look back on this day as a non event.

Who knows if they are right or not.

Others think that Bitcoin Cash will eventually replace Bitcoin. No one can know for sure.

What does this mean for Steem and the altcoin markets?

This is all my personal opinion, but I would not be surprised to see money come back into the altcoin space over the coming days and weeks.

A few weeks back a lot of money was taken out of altcoins and put into Bitcoin (presumably to collect Bitcoin Cash or whatever the competing coin was going to be) or moved to the sidelines altogether because of the uncertainty the fork would bring.

Now that we are passed that date (and most of the uncertainty), I fully expect money to come back off the sidelines and also out of Bitcoin and flow back into the altcoin space, Steem included.

Especially if everyone decides to dump Bitcoin Cash.

Basically everyone will have received a nice little 15% dividend on their bitcoin holdings that they can now use to reinvest in Bitcoin or the altcoin space.

For me, I am betting on the latter. :)

Stay informed my friends!

Sources:

https://www.theverge.com/2017/8/1/16075276/bitcoin-cash-hard-fork-coinbase

https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/bitcoin-cash/

Image Sources:

https://news.bitcoin.com/80-bitcoin-miners-agree-july-2017-hard-fork/

https://www.coindesk.com/double-spending-risk-bitcoin-network-fork/