One month ago, amid even higher than normal volatility, Bitcoin underwent a split known as the “hard fork”. While there were myriad technical reasons for this to happen, the most pressing issue was the Bitcoin network being too slow to process the much higher volume of trades developing as cryptocurrency becomes a viable investment. After a few alternative solutions failed to get enough support to improve this situation, including a “replace-by-fee” method where, in essence, the trades that paid the highest commission would pass through the exchange first, the community gained enough votes to support splitting in two, and launching a second currency. While a financial advisor may compare this to a stock spinoff, what is actually happening is rather different, since unlike a stock spinoff, no value needs to be lost or redistributed from Bitcoin into an alt-coin. Read more…