What We Know About Bitcoin Cash's Two Blockchains

At 18:02 UTC, the bitcoin cash blockchain officially split in two.

With one iteration of the bitcoin cash protocol called Bitcoin "Satoshi's Vision" or Bitcoin SV directly opposing the upgrades introduced through another implementation called Bitcoin ABC, the blockchain forked into two distinct networks.

Initially, the Bitcoin ABC network was the only bitcoin cash platform to successfully create new blocks and validate transactions after the system upgrade went live.

Two blocks in the Bitcoin SV network saw its first block mined at 18:29 UTC. Mining pool Mempool mined the first block of Bitcoin SV, with SVPool and Coingeek mining subsequent blocks.

As of press time, Bitcoin ABC is 10 blocks ahead of Bitcoin SV, according to data compiled by Coin Dance.

A few hours before hard fork activation, mining pools purporting to support the Bitcoin SV roadmap controlled a supermajority of the bitcoin cash network.

According to bitcoin cash monitoring site CoinDance, Bitcoin ABC is now leading in terms of total hash power support.

As might be expected, the existence of two bitcoin cash chains leaves many questions, primarily regarding what will transpire in the days that come - and whether one chain ultimately gives way to another.

What's more, wild fluctuations in bitcoin cash price were also seen throughout the day across different cryptocurrency exchanges.

According to numbers on crypto exchange Poloniex, the comparative value estimated of both bitcoin cash cryptocurrencies is currently about $94 for Bitcoin SV and $285 for Bitcoin ABC. David Floyd contributed reporting.