Evelyn Cheng

CNBC

Bitcoin fell Friday to its lowest since Nov. 1 as traders bet on its offshoot, bitcoin cash, instead.

The offshoot digital currency surged more than 30% to its highest since Aug. 19, and was last trading near $876, according to CoinMarketCap. Bitcoin cash split off from the original version of bitcoin in August as a minority group of developers decided to implement an upgrade in an effort to increase transaction speeds for the digital currency.

An alternative bitcoin upgrade proposal, SegWit2x, which initially had more developers behind it, was called off Wednesday due to waning support.

More:The costly mistake bitcoin investors are probably making

More:Bitcoin jumps $400 in one day and soars to a new record high

More:Bitcoin cryptocurrency blasts past $7,000 mark in record rise

Bitcoin hit a record high of $7,879.06 that day after the news, but quickly fell and was trading more than 7% lower on the day Friday afternoon near $6,621, according to CoinDesk. That marked its lowest since Nov. 1.

"You can see people playing back and forth between bitcoin and bitcoin cash trading depending on where they think near-term catalysts may be," said Chris Burniske, author of Cryptoassets: The Innovative Investor's Guide to Bitcoin and Beyond. "It's been a battle of investors versus traders that were stockpiling bitcoin to get their 'bitcoin2x dividend.'"

Investors at the time of a bitcoin split technically receive equal amounts of the offshoot currency. Disagreements over upgrade proposals have caused uncertainty over the future of bitcoin, but some traders had been buying bitcoin ahead of splits in order to benefit from a payout of a new digital currency and a potential relief rally in bitcoin following the split.

Creating bitcoin cash through the "mining" process was 13.6 percent more profitable than mining bitcoin, according to data on Coin Dance's website.

© CNBC is a USA TODAY content partner offering financial news and commentary. Its content is produced independently of USA TODAY.