Bitcoin drops more than 12% as top cryptocurrency marketplace starts supporting rival bitcoin cash

Coinbase, the leading platform for buying and selling bitcoin in the United States, said Tuesday that customers can now buy and sell bitcoin cash.

"Sends and receives are available immediately. Buys and sells will be available to all customers once there is sufficient liquidity on GDAX. We anticipate that this will take a few hours," Coinbase said in a blog post Tuesday.

Bitcoin cash split off from the original bitcoin on Aug. 1 after a group of developers decided to try to improve bitcoin transaction speeds and costs. Roger Ver, an outspoken and early bitcoin investor, is a major supporter of bitcoin cash

The majority of developers who supported the original bitcoin failed to reach an agreement this fall on their own upgrade proposal, SegWit2x.

The offshoot currency soared more than 60 percent Tuesday evening ET to all-time highs near $3,540, according to CoinMarketCap. The original bitcoin fell more than 12 percent to near $16,484, according to Coinbase.

Investors in bitcoin at the time of the split should have received an equivalent amount of bitcoin cash, but Coinbase did not immediately do so, and said it would provide support by January. On Tuesday, Coinbase said all customers at the time of the split would have bitcoin cash.

The announcement follows news in the last few days that a large bitcoin payments processor BitPay and major cryptocurrency storage company Blockchain would support bitcoin cash