Bitcoin Cash
Logo
Denominations
CodeBCH[a]
Precision10−8
Development
Implementation(s)BitcoinABC, Bitcoin Unlimited, Bitcoin XT
Project fork ofBitcoin
Ledger
Genesis blockJanuary 3, 2009 (15 years ago) (2009-01-03)[1]
Block #1January 9, 2009 (15 years ago) (2009-01-09)[2]
First block after split (block #478559)August 1, 2017 (6 years ago) (2017-08-01)
Timestamping schemeProof-of-work (partial hash inversion)
Hash functionSHA-256
Issuance scheduledecentralized, block reward
Block reward12.5 BCH[b]
Block time10 minutes
Block explorerblockchair.com/bitcoin-cash/blocks
Supply limit21,000,000 BCH
Valuation
Exchange rateIncrease 1075.28 USD (as of 20 April 2018)[3]
Website
Websitebitcoincash.org
  1. ^ The code "BCC" is also used on several exchanges. BCC is more commonly used as the ticker symbol for Bitconnect.
  2. ^ from July 2016 to approximately June 2020, halved approximately every four years

Bitcoin Cash is a cryptocurrency.[4] In mid-2017 a group of developers not content with the Segregated Witness feature which had recently been added to Bitcoin, implemented a change which forked the Bitcoin code.[5] The change, called a hard fork, took effect on August 1, 2017.[6] As a result, the bitcoin ledger called the blockchain and the cryptocurrency split in two.[5][7] At the time of the fork anyone owning Bitcoin was also in possession of the same number of Bitcoin Cash units.[5]

History

High bitcoin fees and slow transaction confirmations in late 2017 contributed to a push by some in the community to create a hard fork to increase the blocksize.[8]

Idea forms

Up until July 2017, Bitcoin users maintained a common set of rules for the cryptocurrency.[9] On July 20, 2017 at block height 476768 Bitcoin Improvement Proposal (BIP) 91 was locked in (i.e. scheduled to activate at block height 477120).

Some members of the Bitcoin community 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[9][10] and devised a plan to increase the number of transactions its ledger can process by increasing the block size limit to eight megabytes.[11][12]

Development

The first implementation of the Bitcoin Cash protocol called Bitcoin ABC was revealed by Amaury "Deadal Nix" Séchet at the Future of Bitcoin conference in Arnhem, Netherlands. Subsequently, Bitcoin Unlimited made its first release of Bitcoin Cash compatible software, named BUCash[13] and Bitcoin XT also released before the Bitcoin Cash fork.[14] This meant that 3 full node clients were available before the Bitcoin Cash hard fork on August 1, 2017.

These clients implemented the following changes from Bitcoin:

Launch

Upon launch, Bitcoin Cash inherited the transaction history of the Bitcoin cryptocurrency on that date, but all later transactions were separate. Block 478558 was the last common block and thus the first separate Bitcoin Cash block was 478559. Bitcoin Cash cryptocurrency wallets started to reject Bitcoin blocks and Bitcoin transactions after 13:20 UTC, August 1, 2017 because it used a timer to initiate a fork. One exchange started Bitcoin Cash futures trading at 0.5 BTC on July 23; the futures dropped to 0.1 BTC by July 30. Market cap appeared since 23:15 UTC, August 1, 2017.[10][15] Per the coinmarketcap.com site, the price of BTC on August 1, 2017 was USD$2,718.26[16] and the price of BCH was USD$380.01,[17] which suggests the BCH split ratio to be 0.12265. The launch of Bitcoin Cash has created an ideological divide over which chain is the true bitcoin.[18]

Naming Controversy

The Bitcoin Cash name was originally proposed by the mining pool ViaBTC. Bitcoin Cash is also referred to as Bcash.[19][20]

Two large cryptocurrency exchanges, Bitstamp and Bitfinex, temporarily used the name Bcash, but switched back to the name Bitcoin Cash after receiving criticism for the change.

Move of hashpower and difficulty adjustment

On August 9, 2017 it was 30% more profitable to mine on the Bitcoin chain.[21] As both chains use the same proof-of-work algorithm, miners can easily move their hashpower between the two. As of August 30, 2017 around 1,500 more blocks were mined on the Bitcoin Cash chain than on the Bitcoin chain.

Due to the new Emergency Difficulty Adjustment (EDA) algorithm used by Bitcoin Cash,[22] mining difficulty fluctuated rapidly, and the most profitable chain to mine switched repeatedly between Bitcoin Cash and Bitcoin.

A fix for these difficulty, hashrate, and profitability fluctuations was introduced on November 13, 2017 at 7:06 p.m. UTC.

The EDA algorithm has been replaced with a new difficulty adjustment algorithm (DAA) that hopes to prevent extreme fluctuations in difficulty while still allowing Bitcoin Cash to adapt to hashrate changes faster than the original Bitcoin algorithm adjusting the difficulty every 2016 blocks.

Block size increase

On May 15, 2018 the protocol was upgraded via a planned hard fork to increase the block size limit from 8 to 32 Megabytes.

Market acceptance

As of May 26, 2018, Bitcoin Cash is the fourth largest cryptocurrency in terms of market capitalization.[23]

Cryptocurrency exchanges

Bitcoin Cash has been adopted by digital currency exchanges. Exchanges such as Coinbase,[24] Gemini (digital currency exchange),[4] Kraken,[25] ShapeShift and many others use the Bitcoin Cash name and the BCH ticker symbol for the cryptocurrency.

Bittrex, Binance, and Huobi exchange use BCC as Bitcoin Cash's ticker symbol instead. BCC is more commonly used as the ticker symbol for Bitconnect.

On March 26, 2018, KuCoin removed all Bitcoin Cash trading pairs followed by OKEx on March 30, 2018, who also ceased Bitcoin Cash trading pairs (BCH/BTC, BCH/ETH, BCH/USDT) due to "inadequate liquidity".

Cryptocurrency wallets

Cryptocurrency wallets such as the Ledger hardware wallet, KeepKey hardware wallet, Electron Cash software wallet and Bitcoin.com software wallet support Bitcoin Cash, using either BCH or BCC as the ticker symbol for it. Bitcoin Cash is also supported by the Trezor hardware wallet and the Blockchain.info wallet.

Payment service providers

The cryptocurrency payment processor BitPay added support for Bitcoin Cash on March 28, 2018.

See also

References

  1. ^ "Bitcoin Cash Block 0". blockchair.com. Retrieved 13 February 2018.
  2. ^ "Bitcoin Cash Block 1". blockchair.com. Retrieved 13 February 2018.
  3. ^ "Cryptocurrency Market Capitalizations". coinmarketcap.com. Retrieved 20 April 2018.
  4. ^ a b del Castillo, Michael (14 May 2018). "Winklevoss Brothers Bitcoin Exchange Adds Zcash, Litecoin, Bitcoin Cash". Forbes. Retrieved 24 May 2018.
  5. ^ a b c Larson, Selena (1 August 2017). "Bitcoin split in two, here's what that means". CNN. Retrieved 22 January 2018.
  6. ^ Smith, Jake (11 August 2017). "The Bitcoin Cash Hard Fork Will Show Us Which Coin Is Best". Forbes. Retrieved 11 March 2018.
  7. ^ Thieme, Nick (4 August 2017). "Bitcoin Has Split Into Two Cryptocurrencies. What, Exactly, Does That Mean?". Slate. Retrieved 8 March 2018.
  8. ^ Annie Nova (2 March 2017). "Bitcoin takes on cash, as more places accept the cryptocurrency". CNBC. Retrieved 13 April 2018.
  9. ^ a b Popper, Nathaniel (July 25, 2017). "Some Bitcoin Backers Are Defecting to Create a Rival Currency". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved July 28, 2017.
  10. ^ a b Wong, Joon Ian (July 25, 2017). "There's a strange new twist in Bitcoin's "civil war"—and a way to bet on the outcome". Quartz. Retrieved July 28, 2017.
  11. ^ Nakamura, Yuri; Kharif, Olga (4 December 2017). "Battle for 'True' Bitcoin Is Just Getting Started". Bloomberg Businessweek. Retrieved 19 December 2017.
  12. ^ Nguyen, Jimmy. "All Merchants Want For Christmas Should Be Bitcoin Cash". Huffington Post. Retrieved 24 December 2017.
  13. ^ https://github.com/BitcoinUnlimited/BitcoinUnlimitedWebDownloads/commit/40c45b24c785a1d487bff4b43f88bfeffbf6af32
  14. ^ https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/pipermail/bitcoin-ml/2017-July/000071.html
  15. ^ "Bitcoin Cash (BCH) price, charts, market cap, and other metrics - CoinMarketCap". coinmarketcap.com.
  16. ^ "Coin Market Capitalizations". coinmarketcap.com. Retrieved 18 April 2018.
  17. ^ "Cryptocurrency Market Capitalizations". coinmarketcap.com. Retrieved 18 April 2018.
  18. ^ Laura Shin (23 October 2017). "Will This Battle For The Soul Of Bitcoin Destroy It?". Forbes. Retrieved 14 April 2018.
  19. ^ Shen, Lucinda (8 August 2017). "Bitcoin Just Surged to Yet Another All-Time High". Fortune Magazine.
  20. ^ Ambler, Pamela (9 August 2017). "The Rapid Rise And Fall Of Bitcoin Cash". Forbes.
  21. ^ "Coin Dance - Bitcoin Cash Block Details". 8 August 2017. Archived from the original on 8 August 2017. ((cite web)): Unknown parameter |deadurl= ignored (|url-status= suggested) (help)
  22. ^ "Technical specifications". 12 November 2017 – via GitHub.
  23. ^ "Cryptocurrency Market Capitalizations | CoinMarketCap". coinmarketcap.com. Retrieved 2018-05-26.
  24. ^ Peterson, Becky (9 January 2018). "Coinbase blames extreme buyer demand for last month's Bitcoin cash disaster". Business Insider. Retrieved 4 May 2018.
  25. ^ KrakenFX. "Bitcoin Cash and a Critical Alert for Bitcoin Margin Traders". kraken.com. Retrieved 27 July 2017.

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