Today was a unique day for the future of bitcoin, the criptomoneda that for months had faced an internal crisis due to the limitations in its original design: the reduced pace of transactions caused several alternatives to arise on how to solve the problem.
One such alternative has been the emergence of a 'user activated hard fork' (UAHF) that has resulted in the birth of Bitcoin Cash. The implications may be important, but the future of both bitcoin and Bitcoin Cash will depend on the support of the user community.
Two criptomonedas that will compete with each other (with many others)
The original criptomoneda, bitcoin, adopts from now on a new system called Segwit2x that allows to transfer the management of the transactions outside the block chain, something that theoretically should help to solve the problems that existed before the elevated (and Increasing) number of transactions carried out with this currency.
In the case of Bitcoin Cash, the solution is to use larger blocks in the block chain, which was a proposal that had been tried to adapt to Bitcoin without the support for that change being sufficient.
The division between the two currencies - with many others also in the race to be the most relevant - occurred today at 12:37 UTC. At that time, block 478,558 was obtained, the last one before that division, which will now have two different block indices.