Bitcoin Cash
A Bitcoin fork built for fast, cheap peer-to-peer electronic cash.
Overview
Bitcoin Cash emerged on August 1, 2017, as a contentious hard fork of Bitcoin, the culmination of a multi-year scaling debate that split the community into two camps. One camp, later dominant on Bitcoin, argued that base-layer throughput should stay small to preserve node decentralisation and that scaling should happen off-chain via Lightning and other Layer 2 solutions. The other camp — which became Bitcoin Cash — argued that increasing the block size was the most straightforward way to allow more transactions per second and keep fees low, staying true to what they read as Satoshi Nakamoto's original vision of peer-to-peer electronic cash for daily commerce.
The primary technical difference at launch was block size: Bitcoin Cash increased the maximum block size from Bitcoin's 1 MB to 8 MB, and later raised the cap to 32 MB. This allows Bitcoin Cash to process significantly more transactions per block, resulting in lower fees and faster confirmations even during peak usage. In practice, BCH block-space demand has stayed well below capacity, so fees rarely rise above fractions of a cent even during activity spikes that would send Bitcoin fees to tens of dollars.
Bitcoin Cash maintains its own independent blockchain and development roadmap, coordinated by multiple client teams — Bitcoin Cash Node (BCHN), Bitcoin Verde, and others — with a scheduled protocol upgrade every May and November. Notable protocol additions include CashAddr (a new address format to prevent accidental cross-chain sends), Schnorr signatures for smaller, more efficient transactions, and CashFusion for enhanced transaction privacy through CoinJoin-style mixing. In 2023, BCH activated CashTokens, a native token standard that supports both fungible and non-fungible tokens plus programmable covenants directly on the BCH chain — no smart contracts required.
Bitcoin Cash has itself undergone further schisms. In November 2018 it split into BCH and Bitcoin SV over disagreements about further block-size increases and OP_CODE changes. In November 2020 another split produced Bitcoin Cash ABC (later rebranded eCash / XEC) over a proposed developer-funding tax. Each fork reduced BCH's community and hash-power share but left the main BCH chain focused on peer-to-peer cash as its primary use case.
Bitcoin Cash represents one of the most significant philosophical splits in cryptocurrency history — the debate between Bitcoin as a store of value versus Bitcoin as everyday money. By prioritising low fees and fast on-chain transactions, BCH serves users in developing countries, underbanked populations, and merchants who need inexpensive payment rails rather than a speculative asset. It has also served as a live demonstration of the trade-offs of scaling on-chain via bigger blocks rather than off-chain via Layer 2: BCH block-space is abundant and cheap, but network security (measured by hash-power) is materially lower than Bitcoin's, and node operators shoulder more storage and bandwidth costs. CashTokens has additionally shown that a UTXO-based chain can host a rich token ecosystem without Ethereum-style smart contracts.
How It Works
The Basics
Bitcoin Cash works almost identically to Bitcoin at a fundamental level — it uses Proof of Work mining with the SHA-256 algorithm, so it competes for hash-power in the same market as Bitcoin, and transactions are grouped into blocks on a blockchain following the same UTXO model. Miners run SHA-256 ASICs and switch between BCH and BTC based on profitability; BCH's difficulty adjustment algorithm (originally EDA, later ASERT) is designed to keep block times close to 10 minutes even as hash-power moves between chains.
Pros & Cons
- Extremely low transaction fees — usually under $0.01 per transaction
- Faster on-chain confirmation times due to larger block sizes
- Strong focus on real-world payment utility and merchant adoption
- CashTokens protocol enables token creation directly on the BCH chain
- Shares Bitcoin's proven SHA-256 security model
- Significantly lower hash rate and network security compared to Bitcoin
- Smaller community and less institutional interest than Bitcoin
- Has undergone additional forks (BSV), fragmenting the community
- Larger blocks increase hardware requirements for running full nodes
Use Cases
- Low-cost everyday payments — buying coffee, groceries, and services
- Microtransactions and tipping on social media platforms
- Remittances to developing countries where bank fees are prohibitive
- Merchant point-of-sale payments with near-instant confirmation
- On-chain token creation using the CashTokens protocol
Price Chart
Historical USD price from CoinGecko. Educational reference — not investment advice.
Live Market Data
- Market Cap Rank
- #22
- Market Cap
- $4.29B
- 24h Volume
- $141.65M
- Fully Diluted Val
- $4.29B
- All-Time High
- $3,785.82-94.35%December 2017
- All-Time Low
- $76.93December 2018
- 24h Range
- $213.28 – $217.60
Market data from CoinGecko, refreshed every 15 minutes. Educational reference only — not investment advice.
Project Health
Dev activity via CoinGecko, TVL/audit status via DefiLlama; official links are the project’s own. Presence here is not an endorsement.
Where BCH trades
The most active markets for BCH by 24h volume. Informational only — these are not affiliate links or endorsements.
Data via CoinGecko. Always verify you are on an exchange’s official domain before trading.
Technical Details
- Consensus
- Proof of Work (SHA-256)
- Launch Year
- 2017
- Founder
- Community fork (led by Roger Ver, Jihan Wu, and others)
- Max Supply
- 21,000,000 BCH
- Blockchain
- Bitcoin Cash
- Website
- bitcoincash.org