The creation of a second bitcoin asset this week did almost nothing to dilute the price of the original unit, with the value of the new asset instead rocketing skyward, generating almost $US7.5 billion ($9.5 billion) out of thin air.
This week, a group of bitcoin activists and developers created a second version of bitcoin, within a few hours, the value of the new unit – bitcoin cash – leapt to over $US600.
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The original bitcoin price however, remained fairly steady, still trading at about $US2700 a coin, despite an almost duplicate are self
Everyone who has bitcoin now has bitcoin cash and because the market reckons this is worth $US600, it's almost like free money
Firms have spent hundreds of millions of dollars establishing server farms that run 24-hours-a-day generating new ...
Firms have spent hundreds of millions of dollars establishing server farms that run 24-hours-a-day generating new Bitcoins and verifying the legitimacy of the existing ones. Photo: Bloomberg
The "fork" – instigated by some bitcoin miners as they ran different software to generate different sized blocks – meant bitcoin cash essentially inherited a similar amount of coins in circulation: about 16.5 million units.
Calculating the market capitalisation of cryptocurrencies is similar to that of a stock's: you multiply a coin's price by the total supply of coins in circulation
But unlike when a company issues more stock and the price re-rates, bitcoin simply cloned itself and the market instantly ascribed value to the new asset.