The price of bitcoin settled in late trading Monday after the launch of Bitcoin Cash, an alternative to bitcoin supported by a small number of bitcoin traders and miners as an alternative to the new Segwit2x bitcoin implementation.

Bitcoin Cash went live when its first block was mined at 2:20 p.m. EDT, with reports claiming that the new “altcoin” experienced some minor difficulties. “There seems to be some technical issues that might be slowing it down, but yes, the fork has happened,” a blockchain analyst told Business Insider.

The new cryptocurrency works a similar fashion to bitcoin, complete with the same blockchain but with some notable differences. Those include larger block sizes but not the implementation of Segwit2x, a standard that attempts to improve the efficiency of the bitcoin blockchain but is not favored by those supporting Bitcoin Cash.

By Tuesday evening, miners had managed to mine three blocks on the Bitcoin Cash blockchain, a surprisingly low number that is related to the amount of computing power required to mine one. “The fact the block is taking so long is making people reevaluate,” Stefan Thomas, chief technology officer of payment network Ripple Labs Inc., told CNBC. Thomas added that miners could give up on trying to mine Bitcoin Cash, halting its development, if the length of time it takes to mine a block remains as long as it currently is.

In terms of raw numbers, Bitcoin Cash, which trades under the symbol BCH, opened trading at around $300 before surging as high as $422 and later coming back down to $197.

It should be noted that any person who held bitcoin with a bitcoin exchange that supports BCH was given the BCH coins for free. That means that in one day, a multibillion-dollar market has been created out of thin air — or blockchain code, as the case is here. Currently Bitcoin Cash has a market cap of $5.97 billion, according to Coinmarkeetcap.com. However, that may be a theoretical market cap given that everyone entitled to be issued BCH coins doesn’t have them because not all exchanges issued them.

After an initial drop in price, bitcoin settled in late trading at $2,715.79, down from a 24-hour peak of $2,901.65 but well in line with its trading price over the last four days.

Disclosure: Riley has bitcoin holdings and is a customer of Bx.in.th. He currently holds a small amount of bitcoin (worth $32.70 at the time of writing) to better understand the cryptocurrency for SiliconANGLE. 

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