What is Bitcoin Cash?
von Satoshi Nakamoto
Last updated: 28 April, 2018
On August 1, 2017, the bitcoin protocol underwent a hard fork which split the network in two and gave birth to "bitcoin cash."
Why did this happen and what are the consequences?
Tired of the infighting and perceived lack of progress on bitcoin's scaling debate, and unhappy with the decision to go ahead with the SegWit upgrade (which would increase block capacity – but not its size – by restructuring how transaction data was stored), a group of community participants developed an alternative bitcoin with different characteristics. The new version increased the block size from 1MB to 8MB.
It also excluded SegWit, which some felt was no more than a temporary patch to bitcoin's scaling problem. Some were also worried that the second layer networks that SegWit enabled (at time of writing these are still in development) would deflect transaction volume from the main network and diminish bitcoin's importance.
A further difference in the bitcoin cash protocol is the difficulty adjustment mechanism. To maintain a relatively even flow of blocks, the bitcoin protocol adjusts the difficulty factor of the hash puzzle (how hard it is to find the nonce that produces a hash within the specified parameters) every 2016 blocks. With bitcoin cash, the difficulty adjustment is much more agile, adjusting every 600 secondsaccording to the amount of computing power on the network.
This gives the new protocol a fighting chance at survival. If miners don't mine a coin, it dwindles away. With bitcoin's price so much higher than that of bitcoin cash, the latter would only be profitable to mine if it were much easier to do so. In other words, the value of the coin may be lower, but a miner would successfully process blocks more frequently, and collect more bitcoin cash tokens as a reward.
Trading
Bitcoin cash can be purchased at a wide range of big-name exchanges, with Bitfinex, GDAX, HitBTC, Bitstamp and Poloniex handling over 90% of the US$ volume.
After some initial confusion, most exchanges have settled on the ticker symbol BCH, although a few still use BCC (which is also used to denote Bitconnect, even more confusing).
At time of writing, over half of bitcoin cash volume comes from trades out of bitcoin. Most of the demand from fiat currencies comes from the US dollar and the South Korean won.
You can follow bitcoin cash price movements on CoinDesk's price tracker.
Upcoming fork
On May 15, bitcoin cash's protocol is due to upgrade via a hard fork (which means that the whole network will need to enable the new version to be able to continue participating).
The upgrade will further increase the size of the blocks, from 8MB to 32MB, and will introduce a more sophisticated smart contract capability as well as other features such as the expansion of its time stamping, asset creation and rights management function.
Now what?
As with all digital tokens, whether bitcoin cash lasts or not remains to be seen. However, market acceptance has been increasing since the launch, with some large retailers accepting payments in the cryptocurrency. What's more, key industry participants such as Coinbase and Circle have recognized that demand has exceeded their expectations. And an increasing number of crypto hedge funds are including BCH in their holdings, in response to investor demand.
Authored by Noelle Acheson; Bitcoin cash flag image via Shutterstock. Source Coindesk
NEXT: HARD FORK VS SOFT FORK
INDEX: A BEGINNERS GUIDE TO BITCOIN AND BLOCKCHAIN TECHNOLOGY
What is Bitcoin?
It’s a decentralized digital currency
Why Use Bitcoin?
It’s fast, cheap to use, and secure
How Can I Buy Bitcoin?
From an exchange or an individual
How to Buy Bitcoin in the UK
Buying bitcoin in the UK
How to Store Your Bitcoin
Use a digital or paper wallet
What Can You Buy with Bitcoin?
Spend your bitcoins
How to Sell Bitcoin
A guide on how to sell your bitcoins
How to Accept Bitcoin Payments for Your Store
Learn about bitcoin POS systems
How do Bitcoin Transactions Work?
Bitcoin addresses and private keys
Is Bitcoin Legal?
The current regulation around bitcoin
Who is Satoshi Nakamoto?
The founder of bitcoin
How Bitcoin Mining Works
By confirming transactions
How to Set Up a Bitcoin Miner
Generate bitcoins yourself
What are Bitcoin Mining Pools?
What are pools how and how to join them?
How Does Cloud Mining Bitcoin Work?
Alternative bitcoin mining solutions
How to Calculate Mining Profitability
Can you make a ROI?
How to Make a Paper Bitcoin Wallet
Creating an unhackable bitcoin wallet
Can Bitcoin Scale?
A look at the debate and the tech
What is SegWit?
A new way of storing transaction data
What is the Lightning Network?
Off-chain transaction channels
What is Bitcoin Cash?
Same blockchain, different characteristics.
Hard Fork vs Soft Fork
Why and how do blockchains split?
What is the Difference Between Litecoin and Bitcoin?
It’s the silver to bitcoin’s gold
How to Buy Litecoin
How to buy the bitcoin alternative litecoin
How to Mine Litecoin and other Altcoins
How to generate your own altcoins
Understanding Bitcoin Price Charts
A primer on bitcoin price charts
Bitcoin E-Commerce Services for Merchants
How to accept bitcoin at your business
What is Blockchain Technology?
A system of distributed data and logic
How Does Blockchain Technology Work?
Cryptographic keys, distributed networks and network servicing protocols
What Can a Blockchain Do?
Identity, recordkeeping, smart contracts and more
What is a Distributed Ledger?
A dynamic, independently maintained database
What is the Difference Between Public and Permissioned Blockchains?
Can anyone read or write to the ledger?
What is the Difference Between a Blockchain and a Database?
It begins with architectural and administrative decisions
What Are the Applications and Use Cases of Blockchains?
Tokenization, auditing, governance, settlement and more
How Could Blockchain Technology Change Finance?
Cross-border payments, new asset classes, regulatory compliance and more
What are Blockchain’s Issues and Limitations?
Complexity, size, costs, speed, security, politics and more
Why Use a Blockchain?
To manage and secure digital relationships as part of a system of record
What is Ethereum?
A blockchain application platform and ‘world computer’
What is Ether?
The ‘fuel’ of the ethereum network
How to Use Ethereum
Wallets, trading and ‘dapps’
Who Created Ethereum?
Vitalik Buterin
How Ethereum Mining Works
‘Proof of Work’ and ‘Proof of Stake’
How to Mine Ethereum
GPUs, mining software and pools
How Ethereum Works
‘Turing-complete’ programming, ‘state’ and the ‘EVM’
What is a Decentralized Application?
A distributed ‘smart contract’ system
What is a DAO?
A ‘decentralized autonomous organization’
How Do Ethereum Smart Contracts Work?
Code, transaction fees and ‘gas’
How Will Ethereum Scale?
‘Sharding’ and ‘off-chain’ transactions
What is an ICO?
Initial Coin Offerings refer to the distribution of digital tokens.
Read the full article
On August 1, 2017, the bitcoin protocol underwent a hard fork which split the network in two and gave birth to "bitcoin cash."
Why did this happen and what are the consequences?
Tired of the infighting and perceived lack of progress on bitcoin's scaling debate, and unhappy with the decision to go ahead with the SegWit upgrade (which would increase block capacity – but not its size – by restructuring how transaction data was stored), a group of community participants developed an alternative bitcoin with different characteristics. The new version increased the block size from 1MB to 8MB.
It also excluded SegWit, which some felt was no more than a temporary patch to bitcoin's scaling problem. Some were also worried that the second layer networks that SegWit enabled (at time of writing these are still in development) would deflect transaction volume from the main network and diminish bitcoin's importance.
A further difference in the bitcoin cash protocol is the difficulty adjustment mechanism. To maintain a relatively even flow of blocks, the bitcoin protocol adjusts the difficulty factor of the hash puzzle (how hard it is to find the nonce that produces a hash within the specified parameters) every 2016 blocks. With bitcoin cash, the difficulty adjustment is much more agile, adjusting every 600 secondsaccording to the amount of computing power on the network.
This gives the new protocol a fighting chance at survival. If miners don't mine a coin, it dwindles away. With bitcoin's price so much higher than that of bitcoin cash, the latter would only be profitable to mine if it were much easier to do so. In other words, the value of the coin may be lower, but a miner would successfully process blocks more frequently, and collect more bitcoin cash tokens as a reward.
Trading
Bitcoin cash can be purchased at a wide range of big-name exchanges, with Bitfinex, GDAX, HitBTC, Bitstamp and Poloniex handling over 90% of the US$ volume.
After some initial confusion, most exchanges have settled on the ticker symbol BCH, although a few still use BCC (which is also used to denote Bitconnect, even more confusing).
At time of writing, over half of bitcoin cash volume comes from trades out of bitcoin. Most of the demand from fiat currencies comes from the US dollar and the South Korean won.
You can follow bitcoin cash price movements on CoinDesk's price tracker.
Upcoming fork
On May 15, bitcoin cash's protocol is due to upgrade via a hard fork (which means that the whole network will need to enable the new version to be able to continue participating).
The upgrade will further increase the size of the blocks, from 8MB to 32MB, and will introduce a more sophisticated smart contract capability as well as other features such as the expansion of its time stamping, asset creation and rights management function.
Now what?
As with all digital tokens, whether bitcoin cash lasts or not remains to be seen. However, market acceptance has been increasing since the launch, with some large retailers accepting payments in the cryptocurrency. What's more, key industry participants such as Coinbase and Circle have recognized that demand has exceeded their expectations. And an increasing number of crypto hedge funds are including BCH in their holdings, in response to investor demand.
Authored by Noelle Acheson; Bitcoin cash flag image via Shutterstock. Source Coindesk
NEXT: HARD FORK VS SOFT FORK
INDEX: A BEGINNERS GUIDE TO BITCOIN AND BLOCKCHAIN TECHNOLOGY
What is Bitcoin?
It’s a decentralized digital currency
Why Use Bitcoin?
It’s fast, cheap to use, and secure
How Can I Buy Bitcoin?
From an exchange or an individual
How to Buy Bitcoin in the UK
Buying bitcoin in the UK
How to Store Your Bitcoin
Use a digital or paper wallet
What Can You Buy with Bitcoin?
Spend your bitcoins
How to Sell Bitcoin
A guide on how to sell your bitcoins
How to Accept Bitcoin Payments for Your Store
Learn about bitcoin POS systems
How do Bitcoin Transactions Work?
Bitcoin addresses and private keys
Is Bitcoin Legal?
The current regulation around bitcoin
Who is Satoshi Nakamoto?
The founder of bitcoin
How Bitcoin Mining Works
By confirming transactions
How to Set Up a Bitcoin Miner
Generate bitcoins yourself
What are Bitcoin Mining Pools?
What are pools how and how to join them?
How Does Cloud Mining Bitcoin Work?
Alternative bitcoin mining solutions
How to Calculate Mining Profitability
Can you make a ROI?
How to Make a Paper Bitcoin Wallet
Creating an unhackable bitcoin wallet
Can Bitcoin Scale?
A look at the debate and the tech
What is SegWit?
A new way of storing transaction data
What is the Lightning Network?
Off-chain transaction channels
What is Bitcoin Cash?
Same blockchain, different characteristics.
Hard Fork vs Soft Fork
Why and how do blockchains split?
What is the Difference Between Litecoin and Bitcoin?
It’s the silver to bitcoin’s gold
How to Buy Litecoin
How to buy the bitcoin alternative litecoin
How to Mine Litecoin and other Altcoins
How to generate your own altcoins
Understanding Bitcoin Price Charts
A primer on bitcoin price charts
Bitcoin E-Commerce Services for Merchants
How to accept bitcoin at your business
What is Blockchain Technology?
A system of distributed data and logic
How Does Blockchain Technology Work?
Cryptographic keys, distributed networks and network servicing protocols
What Can a Blockchain Do?
Identity, recordkeeping, smart contracts and more
What is a Distributed Ledger?
A dynamic, independently maintained database
What is the Difference Between Public and Permissioned Blockchains?
Can anyone read or write to the ledger?
What is the Difference Between a Blockchain and a Database?
It begins with architectural and administrative decisions
What Are the Applications and Use Cases of Blockchains?
Tokenization, auditing, governance, settlement and more
How Could Blockchain Technology Change Finance?
Cross-border payments, new asset classes, regulatory compliance and more
What are Blockchain’s Issues and Limitations?
Complexity, size, costs, speed, security, politics and more
Why Use a Blockchain?
To manage and secure digital relationships as part of a system of record
What is Ethereum?
A blockchain application platform and ‘world computer’
What is Ether?
The ‘fuel’ of the ethereum network
How to Use Ethereum
Wallets, trading and ‘dapps’
Who Created Ethereum?
Vitalik Buterin
How Ethereum Mining Works
‘Proof of Work’ and ‘Proof of Stake’
How to Mine Ethereum
GPUs, mining software and pools
How Ethereum Works
‘Turing-complete’ programming, ‘state’ and the ‘EVM’
What is a Decentralized Application?
A distributed ‘smart contract’ system
What is a DAO?
A ‘decentralized autonomous organization’
How Do Ethereum Smart Contracts Work?
Code, transaction fees and ‘gas’
How Will Ethereum Scale?
‘Sharding’ and ‘off-chain’ transactions
What is an ICO?
Initial Coin Offerings refer to the distribution of digital tokens.
Read the full article
Satoshi Nakamoto
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