Investing Trading Cryptocurrency & Bitcoin What Are Bitcoin Forks? By Brian Edmondson Updated on January 30, 2022 Reviewed by Michael J Boyle Reviewed by Michael J Boyle Michael Boyle is an experienced financial professional with more than 10 years working with financial planning, derivatives, equities, fixed income, project management, and analytics. learn about our financial review board In This Article View All In This Article Definition and Example of Bitcoin Forks How Bitcoin Forks Work Types of Major Bitcoin Hard Forks Photo: South_agency / Getty Images Definition Bitcoin forks are splits that happen in the transaction chain based on different user opinions about transaction history. These splits create new versions of Bitcoin currency and are natural results of the structure of the blockchain system, which operates without a central authority. Key Takeaways Bitcoin forks are new forms of Bitcoin that result from different perspectives on transaction history.Soft forks do not result in a new currency, while hard forks are deeper changes within the blockchain and lead to new types of blockchain currency.The different hard forks of Bitcoin have wildly varied pricing and different goals. Not all of them have held their value as well as the original Bitcoin, but some have outperformed it. Definition and Example of Bitcoin Forks The concept of forks and the technology involved is extremely complex, but the easiest way to think about Bitcoin forks is that they introduce a new set of rules for Bitcoin to follow. Because a new rule, or fork, is introduced, the users mining that particular Bitcoin blockchain can choose to follow one set of rules or another, similar to a fork in the road. On a basic level, these forks arise out of different perspectives on transaction history, which can happen due to delays in the system. As Bitcoin became more and more popular, the blockchain technology it was built on slowed down, resulting in the entire system becoming unreliable and the transaction fees getting more expensive. Because of this slowdown, Bitcoin needed to create a solution that would scale as more users bought and sold the product. That’s where the forks came in. Forks allow for a different development structure and experimentation within the Bitcoin platform without compromising the original product. The original Bitcoin was developed on 1-megabyte blocks, which was limiting as the cryptocurrency scaled and became more popular. These forks can be developed on larger blocks and result in a brand-new currency. Note Buying and selling either original Bitcoin or any of its forks is highly speculative at this point, and you can lose a lot of money quickly. Spend only what you can afford to lose. How Bitcoin Forks Work There are two types of Bitcoin forks—"soft forks" and "hard forks." Here is how they work. Soft Forks A soft fork is a change to the Bitcoin protocol rather than a change to the end product. The big difference between a soft fork and a hard fork is that a soft fork is backward-compatible, which means that the new protocol will be recognized by old nodes within the system. It also means that there is not a new product being launched, Hard Forks Hard forks are new versions of Bitcoin that are completely split from the original version. There are no transactions or communications between the two types of Bitcoin after a hard fork. They are separate from each other, and the change is permanent. Note If you are running the older Bitcoin software, you will no longer be able to interact with users who upgraded to the newer software, and vice versa. This is basically creating two types of currency, but in this case, the currency is not interchangeable. You can think of forks like organizational splits, with one part of a company moving in one direction, and another part of the company moving in another direction. That’s exactly what happened with Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash, and Bitcoin Gold. These are all separate cryptocurrencies within the Bitcoin family, and all operate independently with different rules. They are all still cryptocurrencies but not the same as the original Bitcoin. Types of Major Bitcoin Hard Forks The two biggest Bitcoin hard forks are Bitcoin Cash and Bitcoin Gold, although there are others as well. The Bitcoin Cash Hard Fork Bitcoin Cash is a hard fork of Bitcoin that occurred on August 1, 2017. It was designed to overcome the problems that Bitcoin was experiencing with delayed transactions and lag. To do that, it uses 8-megabyte blocks instead of the 1-megabyte blocks used by the original Bitcoin, making it easier to scale as more people interact with the service. Note The larger blocks can hold more data and speed up the process of buying and selling as more people come onto the system. The Bitcoin Gold Hard Fork Bitcoin Gold is a different hard fork that occurred in October 2017 with the goal of making Bitcoin mining a more equal process that requires only basic equipment. It’s mined on standard graphics processing units instead of specific hardware developed exclusively for the mining of Bitcoin (referred to as "ASICs"—application-specific integrated circuits), which is more expensive and limited to a few big players. The idea here was to increase the independence and decentralization inherent to the original Bitcoin concept. Other Bitcoin Hard Forks In addition to these two main hard forks, there has been a flurry of other hard forks and experimentation within the Bitcoin system. Here are a few of the other hard forks and when they started. Bitcoin Diamond: November 2017Super Bitcoin: December 2017Bitcoin Atom: January 2018Bitcore: November 2017Bitcoin God: December 2017Bitcoin Private: January 2018Bitcoin Zeo: September 2018Bitcoin Post-Quantum: December 2018 Was this page helpful? Thanks for your feedback! Tell us why! Other Submit Sources The Balance uses only high-quality sources, including peer-reviewed studies, to support the facts within our articles. Read our editorial process to learn more about how we fact-check and keep our content accurate, reliable, and trustworthy. Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland. "Bitcoin’s Decentralized Decision Structure." Accessed Nov. 27, 2021.