Bitcoin is sliding after bitcoin gold goes live

First there was bitcoin, then bitcoin cash -- and now there’s bitcoin gold.

A new iteration of the cryptocurrency has been formed after some developers split the blockchain, the digitized ledger on which the bitcoin is based. Called bitcoin gold, the offshoot comes less than three months after bitcoin cash was created.

While independence from any central authority is part of bitcoin’s appeal, that’s also made it more susceptible to such so-called “hard forks” when there are differing visions within the cryptocurrency community. Bitcoin gold aside, bitcoin miners and developers have been embroiled in a debate lately over an upgrade of its protocol that’s aimed at speeding up transactions. A lack of consensus is threatening yet another schism next month.

"This is what will be required to make fair mining accessible to the general public once again," said Robert Kuhne, a strategist at the bitcoin gold project. "A successful fork will prove that bitcoin always has the ability to escape from any potential abusive mining hardware manufacturers," who he blamed for "unnecessary stalling" this year.

Early trading of bitcoin gold was volatile, with prices ranging from $60 to $200 on several exchanges. The new cryptocurrency traded at $98 as of 11:21 a.m. in Tokyo, according to exchange Bitfinex. At that price, its market capitalization stood at about $1.6 billion, making it the world’s eighth-largest cryptocurrency, according to data from coinmarketcap.com.

As groups supporting different digital networks and related currencies jockey for dominance, some may be trying to undermine bitcoin gold’s efforts. The official website went down Tuesday as hackers sought to prevent users from accessing it in what are known as denial-of-service attacks. Bitcoin gold developers said on Twitter that the site is fielding 10 million requests per minute, and they are working with providers to halt the attackers.

Bitcoin dropped 3.3 percent to $5,413 as of 11:18 a.m. in Tokyo after falling as much as 5.9 percent a day earlier when the split occurred.

“Bitcoin’s recent downturn has been driven by the traders’ anticipation of minor disarray in the wake of the upcoming hard forks,” said Thomas Glucksmann, Hong Kong-based head of marketing at cryptocurrency exchange Gatecoin Ltd. “The bitcoin exchange and wallet community has been divided over their decisions to support or reject these contentious hard forks.”