Right, make yourself a coffee or whatever your preference is, get comfortable and I shall begin.
You could be forgiven for thinking that some of the so-called key players in Bitcoin World have gone completely nuts. There is a drama being played out now which would match a full on Shakespearean tragedy (well, if that tragedy were being played-out at Kindergarten anyway) and just when we thought it was all over and the dispute had been reluctantly settled - up pops Bitcoin Cash.
You may be hearing much talk about the Bitcoin Cash Token. This is, simply put, an altcoin (and it is best to look at it as such to save yourself form confusion) but it is also a forced blockchain fork.
The Bitcoin Cash protocol has been launched by a bunch of very wealthy individuals who do not like that SEGWIT (Segregated Witness) has been signalled for adoption by most of the Bitcoin Miners and Network and they now want to go off in a new direction by creating and mining Bitcoin Cash.
This is because they have always wanted more than the increased capacity that the activation of SEGWIT (and SEGWIT2X) gives Bitcoin and they also want to make Bitcoin a 100% peer to peer payment solution rather than the "digital gold" that we've come to accept. By the way, don't worry about what SEGWIT means in detail, I have explained it before in the past if you want to go back over some older Bit-Talk's.
There is no issue here for current holders of Bitcoin!
Their answer to, effectively, not getting their own way is to ignore the consensus that gave a green light to SEGWIT and create a new Bitcoin alternative. As I said, the best way to view this is as simply another altcoin. It could become as Ethereum Classic became with Ethereum when that network split. Either way, it is going to happen or not happen regardless of what we may think and it cannot hurt us in any way.
You may or may not be able to trade this in time on an exchange (if it gains some traction). In fact, there is already a futures market on the price of Bitcoin Cash at the viaBTC exchange now.
In theory, it could independently grow its value to be worth more than the original Bitcoin - but that is highly debatable in my opinion. I think, at best, it will do what Ethereum Classic has done or just fade away. But should it get to the exchanges and become a proper trading coin, you might be able to sell it and literally turn it into extra cash or Bitcoin (core).
But the key point is, there is no need to panic at all and you need do nothing. The only question mark is, as always, what will the exchanges do? Will they give you one for one Bitcoin Cash for your held bitcoin on the exchange like some wallets have already decided to do (Ledger for instance).
So, this isn't a problem for Bitcoin and it isn't, as some are calling it, a blockchain split or hard fork in the real sense. What will happen is that, for every Bitcoin in your wallet on 1st August you should also get 1 Bitcoin Cash Token. Then, over time, the miners, the network, the market will decide whether Bitcoin Cash has any long term meaning in the end.
Had most Bitcoin miners NOT agreed to activate SEGWIT by the 1st August (and they have now done so - and this is important to remember) then something called BIP 148 would have forced SEGWIT adoption on Bitcoin and that may have caused a proper hard fork in the blockchain (just like the one that occurred with Ethereum some time back).
But BIP148 has now become irrelevant unless the mining consensus was an out and out lie and they were all planning on defaulting back to allow BIP148 to happen instead. Oops, now I am being dramatic.
It would be nonsense if it were all a ruse and, as far as can be reasonably deduced, Bitcoin will move forward with SEGWIT and the capacity to deal with ever increasing transactions will be put in place.
What the Bitcoin Cash folks are hoping for is that enough people like Bitcoin Cash as an idea and start to build a nice strong infrastructure around that. Now it should be noted that the Bitcoin Cash dudes are some of the fellas behind the Bitcoin Unlimited proposal (Roger Ver for example if you've heard of him). These guys are, in the main, very wealthy individuals who see a different path for Bitcoin and do not want to go down the route that Bitcoin Core is taking and (right now) the Bitcoin network is moving towards.
Hope that helps and please bear in mind that it is all happening so fast around Bitcoin now that I cannot guarantee absolute accuracy with my opinions here.
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