What is Bitcoin Cash?
Bitcoin Cash is not, as the name could imply, a cash version of Bitcoin. In fact, it’s not even Bitcoin as you probably know it. Rather, Bitcoin is a completely different cryptocurrency. It uses a different blockchain, it is priced differently, and it’s run by a different community. It even has a different ticker. Bitcoin Core, which is the one you’ve probably heard of, is abbreviated BTC. Bitcoin Cash, on the other hand, is abbreviated BCH. You will also notice there are two separate websites for each token. You can learn about BTC on www.bitcoin.org. The www.bitcoin.com website, on the other hand, is concentrated on promoting BCH.
How did Bitcoin Cash come about?
The Bitcoin community reached an impasse last year, in 2017. The cause was Bitcoin’s scalability problem (read our article The Bitcoin Scalability Problem). Part of the Bitcoin community advocated for the implementation of SegWit, which would make transactions faster. The rest of the community, however, did not see it as a viable solution to the scalability problem. Thus, the Bitcoin community was split in two. Fans of SegWit created a hard fork in the Bitcoin blockchain which resulted in Bitcoin Cash. The remaining community continued with Bitcoin as normal. The original Bitcoin was dubbed ‘Bitcoin Core’ by the Bitcoin Cash community in order to differentiate between the two.
How is Bitcoin Cash different from Bitcoin?
If you read the information on the Bitcoin.com website, you’ll find numerous references to the superiority of Bitcoin Cash. For example:
“Bitcoin Core is less usable as money due to much higher fees and delayed transaction times. The Core team has also expressed an interest in keeping these fees high since they view BTC as a “store-of-value” and not something to be transacted on a daily basis. In contrast, Bitcoin Cash’s transaction fees cost pennies and payments can be validated even with zero confirmations. These facts make BCH the ideal cryptocurrency for sending and receiving money anywhere in the world.”
How is Bitcoin Cash similar to Bitcoin?
Although BCH is the result of a hard fork, it still operates on the Bitcoin blockchain. Furthermore, the two cryptocurrencies have the same supply limit of 21 million tokens. Of course, 80% of Bitcoin’s 21 million tokens have already been mined. Meanwhile, BCH was only created in August 2017, which means there are more BCH tokens to be mined. Both BTC and BCH have avoided the issue of inflation by limiting the supply.
How to get Bitcoin Cash
Bitcoin Cash has gained steam quite fast compared to other new cryptocurrencies. BCH can be bought on most mainstream cryptocurrency exchanges. Bear in mind that the value of BTC is around $5,200, whereas BCH is around $400.
How stable is Bitcoin Cash?
Since BCH is a relatively new cryptocurrency, it’s hard to say how stable or volatile it is. The value peaked at around $2,400 in December 2017 when Bitcoin was at its all-time high of $20,000. Since then, it’s dropped considerably in tandem with Bitcoin. Like BTC, BCH has remained quite stable for most of 2018.