bitcoin Bill Gates

The bitcoin price has been on a tear recently, more than doubling to about $2,900 over the last three months. (It didn't hurt that Sunday, the popular Tim Ferriss podcast released a two-and-a-half-hour episode on the subject.)

But its meteoric rise belies a fact apparent to anyone active in the space: The bitcoin community is at war with itself and at greater risk of splitting apart than ever in its history. Already, the impasse has been a drag on its value.

The power struggle — over the seemingly simple question of how to upgrade the network to handle more transactions — is pushing fees so much higher that, for certain types of transactions, bitcoin is nearly unusable. Transactions that should take 10 minutes are taking days or not going through at all, and the average fee costs $4.75 — a negative development for a network whose proponents once touted the fact that it was cheaper than Visa.