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Bitcoin Cash is a cryptocurrency.[2] In mid-2017, a group of developers wanting to increase bitcoin's block size limit prepared a code change. The change, called a hard fork, took effect on 1 August 2017. As a result, the bitcoin ledger called the blockchain and the cryptocurrency split in two.[3] At the time of the fork anyone owning bitcoin was also in possession of the same number of Bitcoin Cash units.[3] The technical difference between Bitcoin Cash and bitcoin is that Bitcoin Cash allows larger blocks in its blockchain than bitcoin, which in theory allows it to process more transactions per second.[4]

On 15 November 2018 Bitcoin Cash split into two cryptocurrencies.[5]

Contents

Bitcoin Cash is a cryptocurrency[6] and a payment network.[7] In relation to bitcoin it is characterized variously as a spin-off,[6] a strand,[8] a product of a hard fork,[9] an offshoot,[10] a clone,[11] a second version[12] or an altcoin.[13]

The naming of Bitcoin Cash is contentious; it is sometimes referred to as Bcash.[14]

Rising fees on the bitcoin network contributed to a push by some in the community to create a hard fork to increase the blocksize.[15] This push came to a head in July 2017 when some members of the Bitcoin community including Roger Ver felt that adopting BIP 91 without increasing the block-size limit favored people who wanted to treat Bitcoin as a digital investment rather than as a transactional currency.[16][17] This push by some to increase the block size met a resistance. Since its inception up to July 2017, bitcoin users had maintained a common set of rules for the cryptocurrency.[16] Eventually, a group of bitcoin activists,[12] investors, entrepreneurs, developers[16] and largely China based miners were unhappy with bitcoin's proposed SegWit improvement plans meant to increase capacity and pushed forward alternative plans for a split which created Bitcoin Cash.[11] The proposed split included a plan to increase the number of transactions its ledger can process by increasing the block size limit to eight megabytes.[16][17]

The would-be hard fork with an expanded block size limit was described by hardware manufacturer Bitmain in June 2017 as a "contingency plan" should the Bitcoin community decide to fork; the first implementation of the software was proposed under the name Bitcoin ABC at a conference that month. In July 2017, the Bitcoin Cash name was proposed by mining pool ViaBTC.

On 1 August 2017 Bitcoin Cash began trading at about $240, while Bitcoin traded at about $2,700.[3]

In 2018 Bitcoin Core developer Cory Fields found a bug in the Bitcoin ABC software that would have allowed an attacker to create a block causing a chain split. Fields notified the development team about it and the bug was fixed.[18]

In November 2018, a hard-fork chain split of Bitcoin Cash occurred between two rival factions called Bitcoin ABC and Bitcoin SV.[19] On 15 November 2018 Bitcoin Cash ABC traded at about $289 and Bitcoin SV traded at about $96.50, down from $425.01 on 14 November for the un-split Bitcoin Cash.[5]

The split originated from what was described as a "civil war" in two competing bitcoin cash camps.[20][21] The first camp, led by entrepreneur Roger Ver and Jihan Wu of Bitmain, promoted the software entitled Bitcoin ABC (short for Adjustable Blocksize Cap) which would maintain the block size at 32MB.[21] The second camp led by Craig Steven Wright and billionaire Calvin Ayre put forth a competing software version Bitcoin SV, short for "Bitcoin Satoshi's Vision," that would increase the blocksize to 128MB.[19][21]

Controversy

The arguments have devolved over three or four years of bitter debate, the principles are real and they are important to preserve, but a lot of the drama has nothing to do with principles anymore. A lot of this debate is now more about hurt feelings. Its about bruised egos. Its about things that were said that cant be unsaid, insults that were exchanged, and personalities and ego.

Andreas Antonopoulos, "The Verge"

There are two factions of bitcoin supporters, that support large blocks or small blocks.[4] The Bitcoin Cash faction favors the use of its currency as a medium of exchange for commerce while the bitcoin supporting faction view Bitcoin's primary use as that of a store of value.[4] Some bitcoin supporters like to call Bitcoin Cash Bcash, Btrash, or simply, a scam, while Bitcoin Cash advocates insist that their implementation is the pure form of Bitcoin.[4]

Bitcoin Cash trades on digital currency exchanges including Bitstamp,[22] Coinbase,[23] Gemini,[24] Kraken,[25] and ShapeShift using the Bitcoin Cash name and the BCH ticker symbol for the cryptocurrency. A few other exchanges use the BCC ticker symbol, though BCC is commonly used for Bitconnect. On 26 March 2018, OKEx removed all Bitcoin Cash trading pairs except for BCH/BTC, BCH/ETH and BCH/USDT due to "inadequate liquidity".[6] As of May2018[update], daily transaction numbers for Bitcoin Cash are about one-tenth of those of bitcoin.[6]

By November 2017 the value of Bitcoin Cash, which had been as high as $900, had fallen to around $300, much of that due to people who had originally held Bitcoin selling off the Bitcoin Cash they received at the hard fork.[15] On 20 December 2017 it reached an intraday high of $4,355.62 and then fell 88% to $519.12 on 23 August 2018.[26]

As of August 2018, Bitcoin Cash payments are supported by payment service providers such as BitPay, Coinify and GoCoin.[27] The research firm Chainanalysis noted that in May 2018, 17 largest payment processing services such as BitPay, Coinify, and GoCoin processed Bitcoin Cash payments worth of US$3.7 million, down from US$10.5 million processed in March.[27]

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Bitcoin Cash - Wikipedia