Bitcoin Cash (BCH) is a hard fork of the cryptocurrency bitcoin.
The bitcoin scalability debate led to
the hard fork on August 1, 2017, which resulted in the creation of a
new blockchain. The stated goal of the fork was to increase the number
of transactions its ledger can process by increasing the block size
limit to eight megabytes.
Driven by fast transactions and low
fees, Bitcoin Cash has rapidly become one of the most valuable
cryptocurrencies in the world. Here’s why.
In an effort
to improve the efficiency of transactions, Bitcoin Cash broke off from
the original bitcoin network on 1 August 2017. Bitcoin Cash aims to take
bitcoin in a new direction geared towards faster transaction speeds and
lower fees.
Icon |
Symbol |
Initial release date |
Algorithm type |
Max. supply |
|
BCH, BCC, Ƀ
|
1 August 2017
|
SHA-256
|
21 million BCH
|
Built upon the bitcoin model, Bitcoin Cash is a digital currency that is:
- Decentralised. The network is spread out across many different computers all over the world.
- Peer-to-Peer. Person A can send Bitcoin Cash directly to Person B from anywhere in the world without needing an intermediary, like a bank.
- Secure. Bitcoin Cash uses strong encryption to prevent hacking, fraud and cyber attacks.
- Open. The
history of all Bitcoin Cash transactions is logged on a publicly
accessible blockchain that can be viewed and verified by anyone.
Bitcoin Cash was created as a result
of diverging viewpoints within the bitcoin community about how to scale
the network. As more people began to use bitcoin, the network struggled
to keep up with the volume of transactions. As a result, many bitcoin
users were waiting hours, sometimes days, before seeing their
transactions go through.
There was a lot of debate around how
to solve this problem that led to a split between two groups with
opposing viewpoints: those in favour of increasing the size of blocks in
the blockchain versus those in favour of restructuring the way data was
stored in the existing blocks.
The Hard Fork
To make transaction speeds faster,
one group within the bitcoin community wanted to increase the size of
blocks on the bitcoin blockchain. This group, consisting primarily of
bitcoin miners, could not get enough support from the larger bitcoin
community to form the consensus needed to move bitcoin in this
direction. As a result, this group split off (or “hard-forked”) from the
original bitcoin blockchain and formed Bitcoin Cash as a new currency.
Bitcoin Cash recognises the same
blockchain as bitcoin up until the time of the fork, 1 August 2017.
After the fork, Bitcoin Cash transactions started to be recorded on a
new blockchain, specific to Bitcoin Cash, while bitcoin continued to
maintain the original bitcoin blockchain.
The biggest difference between
bitcoin and Bitcoin Cash has to do with the size of blocks on the
blockchain. By increasing block size from bitcoin’s 1MB up to 8MB,
Bitcoin Cash allows many more transactions to be processed in one block.
The idea is to process larger transaction volumes faster and for lower
fees.
Another significant difference
between the two currencies is that the level of difficulty involved in
mining Bitcoin Cash varies depending on how many miners are active on
the network. Many bitcoin miners have migrated over to Bitcoin Cash for
this reason, because it allows them to generate larger profits at a
faster rate than mining bitcoin.
Many cryptocurrency exchanges have
taken steps to integrate Bitcoin Cash, and it’s possible that merchants
will begin to follow suit as the currency continues to grow. For those
looking to use cryptocurrency to buy goods and services, Bitcoin Cash is
not currently accepted by most vendors, including many of those that do
accept bitcoin.
There are a few ways to get your hands on some BCH.
- You might already have some. If
you owned bitcoin before the 1 August fork, you might already have
Bitcoin Cash. Any bitcoin holdings you had prior to the split, unless
they were kept on an exchange, can also be claimed as Bitcoin Cash. The
same private keys associated with your bitcoin wallet can be used to
access equal holdings in Bitcoin Cash.
- Buy from an exchange. Initially,
many of the most prominent exchanges in the US were hesitant to support
Bitcoin Cash. However, due to an increase in value and consumer demand
more and more exchanges are beginning to open their doors to this new
currency.