The bitcoin reached a new historic high on August 7 at more than 2,800 euros per unit, bringing its total capitalization to nearly
45 billion euros.
And while on 1 August, the most famous of the crypto-currencies experienced its first "fork", ie a part of the community wished to modify its characteristics. This decision, however, was not unanimous, the bitcoin was divided into two distinct currencies.
Miners", those people who lend the computing power of their computers to check and register on the block chain all
transactions, wanted to make this operation more efficient. In fact, it requires an exponential computing power, and therefore becomes increasingly long and expensive as time passes. To remedy this problem, these "minors" putschists have decided to separate from the main block chain of the bitcoin and use a concurrent block chain, more efficient to process transactions.
They thus created a new crypto-coin, the bitcoin cash. It keeps the transaction history of the bitcoin from which it is derived, but takes a different route. All persons in possession of bitcoin have been credited with the same amount of cash bitcoin at the time of its creation.
The cash bitcoin quickly rose to more than 660 euros in the first hours of its existence, before settling around 290 euros.
A split that did not impact the oldest crypto-currencies, which after a few days of hesitation resumed its inexorable ascent.