This story begins in Bitcoin’s development circles, when in 2017, a large enough group of developers were not happy with the direction Bitcoin was going. This group of developers believed that Bitcoin’s blockchain had become old and slow, with transactions costing a lot of money, and taking forever to process. They also believed that it was not very decentralized anymore, with mining pools and ASICs controlling the entire network.
A valid argument was presented that Bitcoin was no longer following the founder’s vision, “Satoshi’s Vision”, of a decentralized payment network that everybody could own and operate together. Bitcoin was now being used as a store of value, an investment asset, rather than a transactional currency.
A group that included the now infamous developers Roger Ver and Gavin Andersson decided to make their own version of Bitcoin, called Bcash or Bitcoin Cash (BCH).
In July 2017, a hard fork of the Bitcoin blockchain occurred, and several network node operators rejected it, splitting the chain from that point forward. The hard fork was performed on the Bitcoin chain to include a technological upgrade, called SegWit, which some people felt furthered the product from its original purpose.
The remaining chain and its minority of users took on the name Bitcoin Cash, and moved forward with it. Over the next several months, they put their own series of upgrades into the software, modifying it to be a much faster option to use for actual transactions, while the Bitcoin network continued to be overloaded.
A lot of political turmoil exists between users and developers of both projects. Bitcoin Cash is successful enough that it has taken a major chunk out of what is perceived as value from the original Bitcoin.
Roger Ver also owns bitcoin.com and has made public claims such as, “Bitcoin Cash is the original Bitcoin”, which infuriated many. Doing a search for Bitcoin Cash on the internet returns many links and articles about Bitcoin Cash being a scam, and some valid points are raised.
The claim of wanting to follow “Satoshi’s Vision”, which Bitcoin Cash touted when they forked off the main chain, has not been followed at all. Bitcoin Cash’s network uses the same mining algorithm as Bitcoin, and is entirely dominated by Bitmain’s ASIC mining pools, with Bitmain itself holding massive stores of Bitcoin Cash coins itself. By holding these coins out of circulation to pump up the price with scarcity, Bitcoin Cash is now the very same store of value and investment that caused the community to split from the original Bitcoin.
Bitcoin Cash was born out of an ideology that became an anticlimax in practice, and now uses borrowed technology, name, and fame to generate its value. When the Bitcoin Cash market cap turned to billions of dollars, spread largely amongst this small group, suddenly, those original ideals did not matter so much.
To discredit Bitcoin Cash entirely would be a mistake. The BCH team are full of very talented developers who have contributed a lot to the cryptocurrency scene on its side. A lot of work was done to pump this coin into fourth place in terms of market cap, which currently sits at over $9 billion dollars. By ethical means or not, results are what count to many people, and Bitcoin Cash is accepted as payment in almost as many places as Bitcoin is, which fulfills that end of their original goal.
Being the first major fork to keep Bitcoin in their name, their project was slammed with criticism and mistrust from the start, and blamed for inspiring all of the other subsequent forks who try to piggy-back off Bitcoin’s success by intentionally confusing new crypto users into thinking they’re all part of the same thing. Despite all that, they have risen to overcome these obstacles and become a dominant player that is willing to adapt to thrive. Bitcoin Cash isn’t going away, but it isn’t replacing Bitcoin either.
Interesting facts:
• Bitcoin Cash is the first successful Bitcoin hard-fork.
• Everyone who had Bitcoin in their wallet during the hard-fork got the same amount of Bitcoin Cash for free.
• Bitcoin Cash was created to become the P2P electronic cash system that Satoshi Nakamoto described in the Bitcoin’s whitepaper’s title page, which the traditional Bitcoin failed to become.
• Bitcoin Cash is causing major turmoil again as two opposing parties have risen, arguing about the upcoming update on Bitcoin Cash. Read more about the chaos the two opposing groups are creating in the community here: Bitcoin Cash Forked Up
Website: https://www.bitcoincash.org/
Coinmarketcap: https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/bitcoin-cash/
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