We waited with anticipation, surfing the many rumour mills and charts that would give us a clear indication of the what the Bitcoin spilt would result in.
I for one poured over a number of different channels of info, trying to build up a fundamental and technical picture of the road ahead. So the fork has happened and what does that mean... In terms of long term impacts and forecast to BTC and the Cryptomarket in general, I wish I could give a solid answer, but we all know that predicting a market as volatile as this is a big ask.
Short term however there are some obvious, immediate and practical impacts... For example, the new currency Bitcoin Cash...
Basically, as an owner of Bitcoin that's stored on an exchange that supports Bitcoin Cash, you're entitled to a 1:1 payment in the new currency. i.e for every unit of BTC you own, you can be given the equivalent in Bitcoin Cash. The 2 main types in existence at this time are Bit Connect Coin and Bitcoin Cash, which go by the ticker symbols of BCC and BCH retrospectively.
I'm sure that there are a few people who are in the know and understand this process, but for those who don't it's still, like the whole fork scenario itself, a grey area.
I've been looking into this quite thoroughly over the past week and have found an article that gives a clear, step by step, guide on how to split BTC into BCC and also gives a background on some of the related security aspects.
This has been a great little find
http://alts-club.com/docs/how-to-get-free-bcc-from-btc.php#Transfer-BTC