bitcoin cash
Bitcoin Cash is a cryptocurrency that emerged from a hard fork of Bitcoin in August 2017, born from a dispute over block size. It uses larger blocks to process more transactions per block but has significantly less network security and adoption than Bitcoin.
Bitcoin Cash was created on 1 August 2017 when a group of developers and miners executed a hard fork of the Bitcoin blockchain. The dispute that caused the split was about scaling: how to allow Bitcoin to process more transactions without becoming slow or expensive. One faction wanted to increase the block size directly, fitting more transactions into each block. The other favored solutions outside the main chain, such as the Lightning Network. When the two sides failed to reach agreement, the larger-block faction launched Bitcoin Cash with an initial block size limit of 8 MB, compared to Bitcoin's 1 MB limit at the time.
Bitcoin Cash shares its entire transaction history with Bitcoin up to the moment of the fork. Anyone who held bitcoin on 1 August 2017 automatically received an equivalent amount of BCH. After that point, the two chains evolved independently. Bitcoin Cash has since undergone its own splits, including Bitcoin SV in 2018. The ticker symbol BCH is used on exchanges to distinguish it from BTC, the original Bitcoin.
In terms of mining power, node count, developer activity, and market adoption, Bitcoin Cash is significantly smaller than Bitcoin. It is a separate asset with its own community and development roadmap, not an upgraded version of Bitcoin. The original Bitcoin chain, followed by the overwhelming majority of the network, continued under the name Bitcoin. Understanding the distinction between Bitcoin and its forks matters for anyone navigating the cryptocurrency space.