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Cryptocurrency prices have begun to fall in the last week, bringing the market to its lowest point in the year.
The value of Bitcoin dropped from around $ 6,400 (£ 4,990) last Monday to around $ 5,300 (£ 4,135) today – significantly lower than the $ 20,000 peak (£ 15,600) recorded last December.
Second ranking CoinMarketCap site, the value of the rival bitcoin Ethereum also plummeted, from $ 210 (£ 164) per coin last week to around $ 155 (121 pounds).
The latest falls are attributed to a "fork", a change by which the digital asset will effectively split into two to form a new cryptocurrency – in bitcoin and its bitcoin token in cash, according to Forbes.
Bitcoin ABC and bitcoin SV were created last week in an attempt to improve the existing bitcoin technology, which has undergone few updates since it was created almost ten years ago.
The move triggered mass sales that knocked out billions from the value of bitcoins and other digital currencies, including Ethereum and Ripple of bank-centered currencies.
The crisis comes just days after Changpeng Zhao, CEO of the cryptocurrency trading platform Binance, told the US television station CNBC that he expected the bitcoin to enter another "bull run" similar to the one that has seen the maximum of December.
"It's really hard to predict" what the next price boom would trigger, but "it will happen sooner or later," Zhao said.
