The Bitcoin digital currency team is finally splitting as the new token called Bitcoin Cash (BCH) is already scheduled for launching on Aug. 1, 2017. The value of the new cryptocurrency, however, is yet to be officially announced by its management.
Many digital currency players and Bitcoin enthusiasts believed that the new BCH token will be distributed as “free money” when the Bitcoin Cash hard fork was introduced. This will not be the case, although the new tokens will be issued to consumers at no additional cost.
Other industry players, meanwhile, think that Bitcoin Cash could somewhat reduce the existing value of Bitcoin. They believe that the Bitcoin case will be similar to the case of Ethereum and Ethereum Classic.
Possible Bitcoin Cash value
Under the proposed split, every holder of Bitcoin is entitled to a share of Bitcoin Cash tokens at a 1:1 ratio. For example, if a Bitcoin holder has 100 Bitcoins, then he will receive 100 Bitcoin Cash tokens. The BCH tokens can then be transacted either against Bitcoin or fiat currencies like dollars on supporting exchanges.
However, the value of the BCH tokens could be effectively deducted from the current value of Bitcoin during the transaction.
To effectively explain this scenario, if the value of Bitcoin is $2,800 and Bitcoin Cash is worth $400 when the split is officially made, the Bitcoin Cash value could be deducted from the Bitcoin price.
It is, however, unlikely that Bitcoin’s price would decline to $2,400 on that day.
Moreover, the value or market cap of the Bitcoin network will be distributed over the two Blockchains during the split as they will already be considered as competing forks at that time.
It is also expected that the actual prices of both virtual currencies will be very unstable during the first few days after the official split.