Investing.com - Bitcoin prices moved higher on Thursday, snapping two sessions of losses following the creation of a second version of the virtual currency earlier in the week.
On the U.S.-based Bitfinex exchange, Bitcoin was at $2,737.8, up $57.8 or 2.16% after ending Tuesday at $2,640.0.
Bitcoin prices had fallen slightly since the blockchain supporting the cryptocurrency split into two in an event known as a ‘hard fork,’ on Tuesday, creating Bitcoin Cash, a new version of Bitcoin.
Bitcoin Cash was developed as a measure to increase the capacity of Bitcoin's underlying technology, the blockchain, a shared online ledger that records all transactions.
A recent surge in the popularity of Bitcoin, which saw prices hit a record of $3,000 in June, has meant the blockchain has struggled to cope with a surge in transaction numbers.
The Bitcoin blockchain can only have one megabyte of data added every 10 minutes, which limited it to seven transactions per second.
Bitcoin Cash blocks can be as large as 8MB, which its proponents hope will increase its capacity to process transactions.
Holders of Bitcoin from before the split have access to an equal amount of Bitcoin Cash for free.
Elsewhere in cryptocurrency trading, Ethereum, Bitcoin’s closest rival in terms of market cap, was last up 4.96% or $10.74 to $227.47.
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