Well this just goes to show the incredibly unpredictable nature of the cryptocurrency market at the moment. The specific fork that just occurred between bitcoin and the new bitcoin cash wasn't even on the cards a week ago when were talking about potential forks. Apparently a section of miners decided to increase the block size from 2mb to 8mb. This means the transactions would speed up but apparently would cause security issues and mean that the cryptocurrency would become more centralised as storing 8mb blocks requires more equipment than 2mb blocks so smaller players are frozen out of the network as costs for maintaining it increase. This isn't good for security reasons, more decentralisation is always best.
The split is essentially the same as a spin off in the world of stocks and shares. Each BTC holder received Bit coin cash at a ratio of 1:1 and theoretically the price of both added together equalled the price of the BTC prior to the split. The pump that occurred in the Bit coin cash to circa 700$ was apparently due to people storing their bitcoin in wallets and exchanges that didn't acknowledge the split and didn't give BTC holders their bit coin cash. Coinbase (one of the largest exchanges)didn't acknowledge the split. As such the supply was limited and demand went through the roof. The price spike isn't thought to be a reflection on utility of the coin from what I'm reading.
I would have thought this would have been a disaster but it appears the segwit2 proposal is still due to take place for bitcoin on august the 8th and as such transaction times will come down to the point where it can finally be a currency. The price has rallied strongly to a new all time high today as a result. I wouldn't say its worth buying bitcoin at the moment given your a 5k price tag over the next year or two is what people are talking about. Even at 10k price tag your not getting enough of a payout given the probability of it getting there.
I would consider buying some of the alt currencies though. As I have said if BTC does boom the mania phase of people looking for "the next bitcoin" will send all coins even further upwards even though the majority are overvalued as it is. I think that trying to identify coins with utility that arguably represent value is a good idea but as everything has gone up ,regardless of utility, over the last few months its clear that you may as well put names of coins on a dart board and select the ones your darts hit.