Has Bitcoin ever been hard forked?

Yes, Bitcoin has been hard forked multiple times, resulting in the creation of new cryptocurrencies. Here are some of the most notable instances:

1. Bitcoin Cash: This is one of the most well-known hard forks of Bitcoin, which occurred on August 1, 2017. The main disagreement that led to this fork was over how to address the issue of scalability in the Bitcoin network. Supporters of Bitcoin Cash wanted to increase the block size limit in order to process more transactions per block and therefore increase the overall capacity of the network.
2. Bitcoin SV: Bitcoin SV (Satoshi Vision) is a hard fork of Bitcoin Cash that occurred on November 15, 2018. The fork was the result of disagreements within the Bitcoin Cash community about the future development path of the network, including the block size limit and the introduction of new scripting operations.
3. Bitcoin Gold: Bitcoin Gold is another hard fork of Bitcoin, which occurred on October 24, 2017. The main goal of Bitcoin Gold was to change the proof-of-work algorithm used in Bitcoin from SHA-256 to Equihash, which is more ASIC-resistant and therefore more accessible to individual miners using GPUs.

Please note that a hard fork in a blockchain like Bitcoin results in a completely new cryptocurrency with its own blockchain. After the fork, the two blockchains operate independently of each other.

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