Is Bitcoin Cash the real Bitcoin?
The new cryptocurrency was a modernized version of the original Bitcoin, which was based on its blockchain code, but with some changes that eliminated the scalability problems of the system. Major Bitcoin Cash Updates:
- increased block size
- new principle for changing mining difficulty
- additional transaction protection mechanisms
This technology immediately attracted many investors in the market, and the aggressive promotion policy on the part of the founder of the digital currency only further promoted the BCH project.
Today Bitcoin Cash is confidently among the TOP 5 best cryptocurrencies, having a huge capitalization and a high price. However, is Bitcoin Cash really better than the original Bitcoin? What are its specific advantages? Should you buy or mine BCH today?
We will try to answer all these questions in today’s article, where we will make a complete review of the Bitcoin Cash cryptocurrency. From it you will learn the history of the creation of Bitcoin Cash, the operating principle of its blockchain system, what are the advantages/disadvantages of BCH, how this digital coin is mined, what prospects does Bitcoin Cash have for the near future and whether it can generally resist its progenitor Bitcoin.
Prospects for Bitcoin Cash
Cryptocurrency experts believe that in the future, the original Bitcoin will develop faster than the fork. This will mean that Big Brother will be a more attractive option for investors than Bitcoin Cash for a long time. But if a sufficient number of miners and exchanges pay attention to the new cryptocurrency, then its development will also be rapid. Miners, before all other participants in the cryptocurrency market, will determine the future of the new Bitcoin.
In addition, those who trade virtual coins also make their contribution to the development of the new cryptocurrency. Thus, some users of the Bitcoin network are buying Bitcoin Cash en masse, in the hope of an increase in the exchange rate and the opportunity to earn money, and good ones at that.
The number of market participants who support Bitcoin Cash is growing. So, if immediately after the division the new cryptocurrency was supported by 3% of miners, now there are already about 10% or even more.
However, at the moment, not tens or hundreds, but only a few large pools are engaged in mining the new cryptocoin. There are three of them in total. Two are ViaBTC, plus the ViaBTC company. But the third one is still unknown. At the same time, the third pool accounts for more than 77% of the total network hashrate.
Bitcoin Cash Review
In 2020, the Bitcoin Cash cryptocurrency occupies a stable 4th place in the list of the best cryptocurrencies. The project capitalization is more than 7.89 billion US dollars, the price of one coin is about 454 US dollars, the daily volume of currency trading reaches more than 404 million US dollars. The total coin supply is 21,000,000 BCH, with 17,367,038 BCH currently available in free circulation on the market.
It is noted that Bitcoin Cash has the possibility of traditional mining. Coin ticker: BCH. Official website: https://www.bitcoincash.org Twitter: https://twitter.com/bitcolncash BCH blog on Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoincash/ Bitcoin Cash thread on the Bitcointalk.org forum : https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2040221.0 Open source on GitHub: https://github.com/bitcoincashorg/
The history of Bitcoin Cash. Bitcoin Split
The Bitcoin Cash coin appeared during the well-known conflict in the community of the original Bitcoin currency. Sometime in 2020, when the positive trend of the digital asset market began, the original BTC faced the problem of scalability of its own system. The cost of transactions has been constantly growing, and the speed of financial transactions has dropped significantly due to the rapid increase in demand.
In order to solve the problem, part of the BTC community proposed improving the system protocol, as well as introducing SegWit2x (Segregated Witness) . With these innovations, part of the signatures in the blocks of the Blockchain chain, as well as other secondary information, would be deleted. This would increase the throughput of the Bitcoin network. Thus, its effectiveness would increase significantly, and the coin would receive a new life.
This decision to change Bitcoin for the better and implement the SegWit2x system was supported by the majority of miners distributed throughout China. This would significantly increase their profitability from cryptocurrency mining. Also, other small investors and single miners voted positively for the improvement of BTC.
However, the largest mining pools and part of the development team insisted on an exclusive division - a Bitcoin hard fork. As a result, the community was unable to reach a consensus and a split occurred. Thus, on August 1, 2020, the digital market saw a new cryptocurrency based on the BTC blockchain, which was called Bitcoin Cash. This fork occurred at block number 478558 of Bitcoin. This is why there are so many similarities between the original BTC and BCH, including all the transactions that are stored in their distributed databases.
Why is Bitcoin Cash needed?
The emergence of Bitcoin Cash was a solution to the problems that grew around Bitcoin in 2020. Along with the growth of its popularity, problems also appeared related to the very low speed of transaction processing and high commissions. The main idea of cryptocurrencies is the transition from fiat (paper) money to electronic anonymous money, which will then be used as a means of paying for purchases in stores and exchange between network users. But when transactions take days to process, and fees reach $50 or more, you begin to wonder if there is a future for Bitcoin, not as an investment goal, but as a means of exchange and electronic payments. And it's all about the restrictions on a 1 megabyte block, which affect the speed of transactions. After lengthy discussions, some of the developers created a new algorithm, SegWit2x, and as a result of the Bitcoin hard fork, a new branch appeared - Bitcoin Cash. By increasing the block to 8 megabytes, it was possible to increase the speed of Bitcoin Cash transactions and reduce fees. And after some time, the block was increased to 32 megabytes. It’s not that it was really necessary, but rather that it was done for the future.
See also which Forex brokers provide tools for trading cryptocurrency.
Bitcoin Cash. Way to the top
From the very beginning, Bitcoin Cash has been a significant success. This was influenced by the serious support of the project from various large organizations, as well as the aggressive promotion of the BCH cryptocurrency in various media.
Immediately after entering the digital market, this asset was supported by many popular exchange platforms like Bittrex, and the following blockchain projects openly announced cooperation with BCH: BTC, Top, ViaBTC, BiXin, BW, 1Hash, Canoe, BATPool, Bitkan, OKCoin, Huobi, BTCCPool , Bitmain, F2Pool.
There were, of course, opponents of the Bitcoin Cash cryptocurrency (for example, the Coinbase exchange, Kraken), who did not want to have relations with this coin, justifying that they had enough cooperation with the original Bitcoin. However, their feedback did not have much impact on the future success of BCH.
The next important factor in the initial development of Bitcoin Cash was the support of the BCH currency from many multi-currency online wallets, as well as provocative announcements from developers about the emergence of a new, more advanced cryptocurrency based on BTC.
Moreover, information was disseminated as much as possible that every user who owns at least some amount of Bitcoin has the opportunity to receive a completely free Bitcoin Cash coin to their critical account. BCH accruals occurred in a 1:1 ratio. Thus, if you had 1 Bitcoin in your account, then you would receive 1 Bitcoin Cash coin completely free of charge.
Of course, most investors decided to take advantage of this event, especially those who decided to support the fork. In general, the demand for BTC before the release of BCH simply went through the roof. Everyone wanted their share of Bitcoin Cash coins. So, on August 1, 2017, the BCH coin appeared in free sales on many exchanges, its cost fluctuated around $300.
Everyone assumed that this asset would be in great demand at first, but no one could have imagined that already on August 2, the price of one Bitcoin Cash coin was able to reach $1,300, and its position in the ranking changed to 3rd place, leaving such popular assets like Ripple and Litecoin are behind.
This growing Bitcoin Cash trend did not last long, until the moment when exchanges established the ability to withdraw this asset from their services. Investors and traders decided to withdraw funds from trading platforms and after a very short time the cost of BCH became only 250 US dollars.
After this, the price of Bitcoin Cash grew steadily for a long time and did not have such rapid growth spurts until the moment when at the end of December the developers themselves began to actively pump this asset, briefly accelerating the BCH rate several times.
Thus, in a short period of time (about 10 days of active pumping), the maximum Bitcoin Cash price of $4,000 was reached. And this is provided that the initial cost of one Bitcoin Cash coin was less than $1,500.
History of the Bitcoin Cash pump
Soon after these events, a global market correction began and the price of BCH began to gradually fall.
Description of Bitcoin Cash
The Bitcoin Cash cryptocurrency appeared as a result of the Bitcoin chain split (fork) on August 1, 2020.
On different exchanges it has different tickers, BCC or BCH is used. After the coin appeared on the exchange, it quickly began to grow. Many speculators paid attention to it and began to actively pump, which made it possible for many to earn extra money from it. Bitcoin Cash came about as a result of many people speaking out about Bitcoin's code being outdated. Transactions began to be carried out slowly, and fees increased due to the insufficient size of the Bitcoin block (1 megabyte). The developers took active measures and allocated a new Bitcoin Cash chain of 8 megabytes in size.
To get Bitcoin Cash, you first need to purchase regular Bitcoins on an exchange. After registration, top up your account using any payment system convenient for you and buy bitcoins. Their number will appear in your wallet. Next, go to the Bittrex exchange, where you can purchase Bitcoin Cash for Bitcoins.
The official Bitcoin Cash website has a list of all exchanges and wallets that support BCC.
Bitcoin Cash is linked to the dollar and its value depends directly on supply and demand. Currently, Bitcoin Cash is supported by Chinese miners with a market share of approximately 5% and the two largest mining pools - Antpool and BTC.com. The prospects and profitability of Bitcoin Cash will depend on the balance of power in the mining market, as well as the complexity of calculations. Now information about how much 1 Bitcoin Cash costs in dollars is provided by Bitcoin Cash quotes, changes in which must be constantly monitored. To analyze the growth statistics of Bitcoin Cash against the dollar for the entire period, it is recommended to use a candlestick chart.
Bitcoin Cash is facing serious price fluctuations. Pressure on the exchange rate will ensure that owners are willing to sell at a favorable price without exposing themselves to the risk of uncertainty in the long term. Not all exchanges have yet provided users with access to Bitcoin Cash, which means that its supply on the market will increase significantly.
A positive factor for Bitcoin Cash is its support from Chinese mining pools and major global exchanges, which suggests a growing trend in the value of the cryptocurrency.
Taking into account the current pros and cons, each investor must assess for himself the degree of risk of investing in alternative Bitcoin. However, beginners should not forget about the rule that states that you can invest no more than 30% of your available capital in high-risk assets.
Differences between the Bitcoin Cash blockchain and Bitcoin
The Bitcoin Cash system has almost the same structure as the original Bitcoin. These coins are based on the same blockchain code. SHA-256 mining algorithm, Proof of Work consensus, ten-minute block formation. Even the issue of BTC and BCH assets is the same - 21 million coins. However, BCH does have some changes.
The main distinguishing feature of Bitcoin Cash is the increased block size of the system. In BTC, the block size is only 2 MB. This, in turn, allows the system to maintain complete decentralization and security, however, during times of network congestion with multiple transactions, one operation can take 1-2 days to process.
That is why initially in Bitcoin Cash the block size was changed to 8 MB, and in 2020 the developers increased this volume even more - to 32 MB. Thus, the BCH cryptocurrency is trying to solve the problem of long transactions. I would also like to note the cost of financial transactions in the Bitcoin Cash system. Here they are much cheaper than on the BTC network.
In general, the developers of Bitcoin Cash decided to take the basis of the original Bitcoin and improve it. As a result, we received a decentralized payment system in which all financial transactions are much cheaper and their speed is an order of magnitude higher. It is for these qualities that investors fell in love with Bitcoin Cash as it is now.
Select a city
In the current direction, exchange offices operate in the cities of: Krasnodar, Kemerovo, Krasnoyarsk, Volgograd, Simferopol, Rostov-on-Don, Bryansk, Irkutsk, Perm, Naberezhnye Chelny, Pyatigorsk, Izhevsk, Tula, Novokuznetsk, Taganrog, Chelyabinsk, St. Petersburg, Samara, Stavropol, Ekaterinburg, Moscow, Cheboksary, Kazan, Kursk, Novosibirsk, Omsk, Sochi, Nizhny Novgorod, Ivano-Frankovsk, Kherson, Vinnitsa, Zhytomyr, Cherkasy, Sumy, Kropyvnytskyi, Kramatorsk, Lutsk, Rivne, Uzhgorod, Ternopil, Melitopol , Chernivtsi, Kharkov, Lviv, Khmelnitsky, Krivoy Rog, Mariupol, Dnepr, Odessa, Zaporozhye, Nikolaev, Kremenchug, Poltava, Kiev, Minsk. To clarify the list of exchangers, you can select the city in which it is more convenient for you to exchange cash. You can also use the more informative city selection function, which is located above the table on the left.
Mining Bitcoin Cash. Is it worth mining BCH now?
Mining the Bitcoin Cash cryptocurrency is slightly different from mining the original BTC, although it is carried out using the same calculation algorithm. The fundamental difference between BCH mining is the difficulty change scheme: here it changes not every 2020 blocks, like BTC, but every 6.
Also, the Bitcoin Cash developers have added a new feature - a “slow reduction in mining difficulty algorithm”, which is automatically activated if there is a serious lack of hashrate in the network. Thus, depending on the size of this hashrate, the difficulty of mining will either grow or increase. Otherwise, mining BCH is no different from mining the original BTC.
Now, due to the increased demand for these digital coins, users have the opportunity to mine cryptocurrencies exclusively on expensive ASIC chips or participate in the largest mining pools. At the same time, the difficulty of mining BTC and BCH will be approximately the same (mining bitcoins is a little more difficult).
!Accordingly, based on this, we can draw the following conclusion - mining the Bitcoin Cash cryptocurrency is less profitable in 2020 than the original Bitcoin, since the difficulty of mining is almost the same, but the final profit will be less. BCH is currently worth less than $500, and one BTC is over $6,600.
The difference is obvious, so if you are only looking for profit, and not for the fundamental support of the Bitcoin Cash cryptocurrency, you should consider mining Bitcoin coin.
Benefits of Bitcoin Cash
Supporters of Bitcoin Cash believe that their BCH coin is the real Bitcoin as the creator of the first cryptocurrency, Satoshi Nakamoto, saw it, that is, it must fulfill the main mission - to become a digital currency. Therefore, Bitcoin Cash is based on the Bitcoin concept, to which a number of small changes have been made:
- The block size was increased first to 8 megabytes, and then to 32 megabytes, thanks to which it was possible to achieve high speed of processing Bitcoin Cash transactions and low commissions;
- The adjustment of mining difficulty has been changed, which depends on the increase in hashrate, and is not fixed for every 2020 block like Bitcoin;
- Protection has been introduced to prevent re-use;
- Possibility of storing Bitcoin Cash coins outside the blockchain.
Advantages and Disadvantages of Bitcoin Cash
Having studied the Bitcoin Cash currency in detail, the following advantages can be highlighted:
- Increased block size. Initially, the block in the Bitcoin Cash system was increased to 8 MB. This made it possible to carry out financial transactions much faster than on the Bitcoin network. Relatively recently, BCH developers increased the system blocks to 32 MB. If necessary, they will repeat this procedure and increase the network capacity. Thus, the Bitcoin Cash currency will never suffer from slow transactions.
- New generation transactions. Here, all financial transactions occur at a more secure level, using input value signing functions for improved wallet security, as well as eliminating the problem of quadratic hashing. The user is also given the opportunity to sign separately the transfer amounts.
- System security. Bitcoin Cash is protected from replay and wipeout protection. The difficulty of the BCH network changes much faster than the original.
Bitcoin Cash Development Team
Amaury Sechet
The main developer of the new coin is former Facebook programmer Amaury Sechet. It was he who initiated the Bitcoin hard fork, proposing his idea for a solution to the scalability of the cryptocurrency. Most of the Bitcoin Cash developers come from the 2 largest Bitcoin Cash mining pools viaBTC and Bitmain.
Hypo Yang
The most prominent member of the viaBTC team is Hypo Yang (Twitter), the director of this mining pool. Yang is a mathematician with very deep knowledge of blockchain development. At the beginning of 2016, he decided to create the company ViaBTC, which continues to operate to this day.
Jihan Wu
From the mining pool company Bitmain, I would like to highlight Jihan Wu (Twitter), who is the co-founder of Bitmain. Bitmain is also the owner of the largest mining farm in the world today.
Roger Ver
Of the Bitcoin Cash partners, of course, it is worth highlighting Roger Ver, the famous Bitcoin evangelist, who is very often called “Bitcoin Jesus” on the Internet. Roger today continues to lobby for the Bitcoin Cash project, and he is considered the owner of one of the largest Bitcoin accounts in the world.
Confrontation with Bitcoin by Satoshi Nakamoto and the success of BCH
One of the factors behind the success of the Bitcoin Cash cryptocurrency is the policy of the crypto community led by Roger Ver, who ardently supports BCH to this day. On social networks and various media sources, you can often see news where Roger Ver openly states that the Bitcoin Cash cryptocurrency is the true Bitcoin, reflecting the legacy of Satoshi Nakamoto. First of all, this is due to the fact that the information in the White Paper left by the creator of Bitcoin completely contradicts the decision to introduce the SegWit system into BTC.
Increasing the size of blocks in Bitcoin Cash, according to Roger, is the only correct solution to the scalability of cryptocurrencies. This is the only way to create a true p2p platform for cheap and fast transactions.
This is exactly the aggressive policy Roger Ver is trying to impose on the crypto community. Moreover, it is worth noting that he is not bad at it. The website bitcoin.com about the Bitcoin Cash cryptocurrency, owned by Roger Ver, the Twitter account @Bitcoin, which has nothing to do with BTC, even similar logos of the BTC and BCH systems.
BTC vs BCH
All this, in one case or another, greatly confuses novice investors in the digital market, and it is possible that some of the investments in the Bitcoin Cash cryptocurrency were made solely by user error.
In general, we can assume that the success of Bitcoin Cash was ensured by “copying” the Bitcoin brand, which almost every user in the world knows about. Without the popularity of the original BTC, Bitcoin Cash would hardly have achieved such an impressive result. But, nevertheless, BCH is now a very popular digital coin in which investors continue to invest their money.
Bitcoin Cash Wallet
The most common and convenient way to store BCH cryptocurrency is directly on the exchange where you purchased it. However, this option is very unsafe, so if you have a lot of Bitcoin Cash cryptocurrency, then you should consider safer and more reliable options for storing it.
The safest option is to use cold storage hardware wallets, which are called Ledger Nano S and Trezor. They are small devices in the form of a USB flash drive that connect to your computer. It is through these devices that secure access to your crypto account will occur. Using them is not free, hardware wallets cost money - on average $100 and up. They are best suited for those investors who want to protect their large cryptocurrency savings as much as possible by any means, and are even willing to pay extra money for it.
For all other users who do not have many BCH coins in their account, but also prefer to store them safely and securely, it is best to use the official desktop wallets from the developers of the Bitcoin Cash cryptocurrency. This wallet is an application for your PC, through which secure access to your crypto account will be provided. You can download it from this link https://wallet.bitcoin.com.
There are several more alternative options for storing the Bitcoin Cash cryptocurrency; you can find a complete list of various wallets for BCH on the official website of the project in the special Wallet
Bitcoin Cash Price Predictions
As coin owners note, the price of BCH today is not very high. However, the situation may soon change. An increase in the capitalization value of Bitcoin Cash in a short time, active propaganda of the currency in interested circles indicates its prospects. The classic, familiar Bitcoin was never able to cope with the slowness and high cost of transactions, which strengthened the position of its hard fork. The comparative cheapness of BCH relative to the original also increases its popularity. It is believed that Cash's rise was driven by speculators, making him highly dependent on market demand. Its rise or fall in price depends on the speed of successful integration of a secure scaling solution, which the entire community has been waiting for for so long.
Current Bitcoin Cash to dollar rate:
BCH to ruble exchange rate:
So far, there is no general “movement” of investors from the classic cue ball to its branches on the market. Experts believe that there will be no global adjustment. “Little brother” will soon stop growing, and all rushing investors will fix their profits in Cash and concentrate their financial interests around regular BTC. Bitcoin Cash should not be perceived as a killer of the main cryptocurrency of today - it is just its “next fork”. It is worth noting that the technical side of the new digital money has not yet been fully implemented, because out of the declared eight megabytes, only no more than two are used. Because of this, the speed of transactions did not increase significantly.
And BCH mining is much slower. The predicted growth of the cryptocurrency, its unique ceiling, is half the cost of its “big brother.” But many experts are not confident that it will be achieved in the near future. After all, in their opinion, all the hype around the new product is an artificial hype created by the speculators themselves in order to increase the rate. But it is worth considering that the role of these speculator players are large mining pools, exchanges and other influential holders of a colossal volume of cryptocurrency, which are capable of significantly influencing the entire course of events if desired. In the meantime, all interested parties can make good money on exchange rate jumps.
The creators of Bitcoin Cash stated on their official website that it is a peer-to-peer electronic currency for payment on the Internet. It is not regulated by any financial institution, has no control center and does not require the involvement of third parties to use it. The creators oriented it towards calculation activities.
Bitcoins began to be sold actively immediately after they were freely credited to the wallets of BTC owners. Already in the first hours of the cryptocurrency’s existence, the lion’s share of it was exchanged for fiat funds. But experts do not recommend dumping BCH now, since the currency has not yet reached the required weight in the market. And they consider those owners who have already managed to exchange BCH to be short-sighted players in the financial market. The jump in the price of the new Bitcoin was caused by someone buying more than 15 million coins at once. But after such a round of events, such events were no longer observed. Statistics show that the new fork is only gaining momentum. If at the very beginning the currency was supported by only 3% of participants, today this figure has grown to 15% in a very short period of time.
Based on all of the above, it is impossible to predict what the Bitcoin Cash rate will be in the future, because after growth, no one can guarantee its sharp jump down.
