Bitcoin Cash

Bitcoin Cash Review

When investing in virtual currency, you need to do your research. We provide you with reviews of each world top cryptocurrency out there, so that you can find the best crypto coins to invest in for you. This is a review of Bitcoin Cash.

Origin & Background

Bitcoin has been around for a number of years, and it is safe to say it has had its fair share of controversy. Whether or not it is the volatile pricing or the slow transaction speeds, Bitcoin has had a very turbulent time over the last few years. This has caused divisions among the Bitcoin community. Some members of the Bitcoin community chose to stay faithful to the original cryptocurrency. Others wanted alternatives to Bitcoin.

This culminated in 2017 with a group of developers from the Bitcoin community creating an alternative called Bitcoin Cash (trading symbol BCH). Using the existing Bitcoin platform, they caused what is known as a hard fork on the blockchain. Many people praised the action and Bitcoin Cash has grown steadily since its inception.

More recently however, on 15 November 2018, Bitcoin Cash developed into Bitcoin Cash ABC and Bitcoin Cash SV (Satoshi Vision). The former version of Bitcoin Cash (which this review addresses), remains in existence as Bitcoin Cash and the other version received the name Bitcoin Cash SV.

Blocksize limit

One of the crucial problems Bitcoin encountered in 2016 was that its block limits were creating a funnel that was ever narrowing, and as a result, transaction fees were increasing significantly. This meant that users and owners of Bitcoin were finding it increasingly more expensive to use and trade the coin. This fallout generated a lot of talk in the Bitcoin community. Many disgruntled Bitcoin users sought a solution.

When Bitcoin Cash forked from Bitcoin in 2017, one of the primary factors was to reduce the cost of trading with Bitcoin by increasing the block limit on the blockchain. This new attractive and inexpensive method garnered a lot of attention, and many in the Bitcoin community took Bitcoin Cash as a cheaper-to-transact alternative to Bitcoin.

Declines in Value

Originally, Bitcoin Cash traded at a very high value, given that it was a new сryptocurrency. This was in part down to the development team, making Bitcoin Cash available to all Bitcoin users. This meant that when the fork occurred, there were a lot of people already with Bitcoin Cash in their pocket. When Bitcoin survived the fork and traditional Bitcoin users retained the use of Bitcoin, they sold off their Bitcoin Cash currency. This resulted in Bitcoin Cash dropping staggeringly in value in a very short space of time. For more information on Bitcoin forks, read a more detailed blog post here.

It is currently traded at around a third of its original value (update 27 November 2018: still roughly a third, USD 181 compared to USD 556 at the initial Bitcoin fork). Many people also argue that Bitcoin Cash is “hot purchase” at the moment, especially compared to Bitcoin. One such person is Mary Ann Callahan in this blog post and also in this blog post.

Bitcoin Cash Features

As the developers wanted to avoid problems with Bitcoin, they took steps to that effect. The steps taken intended to address common Bitcoin transaction issues. This meant implementing a higher block limit, a faster transaction speed and a dedication to providing a stable platform that ensured that transaction fees would be kept low.

Typically, with Bitcoin Cash, a transaction will complete in a few minutes. This is in contrary to 10 or so minutes that Bitcoin takes to complete transactions.

Here are Bitcoin Cash’s core aspects, according to BitcoinCash.org:

Quick: Transactions complete in seconds and confirmations occur within minutes.

Consistent: The BCH network runs without obstruction, and is scalable to handle further demand in the future.

Low Fees: Send money worldwide for pennies.

Simple: Easy to use, irrespective of your level of experience with cryptocurrencies.

Steady: It’s a payment system that functions as a proven store of value.

Safe: Bitcoin Cash depends upon the Bitcoin blockchain, described as the “world’s most strongest blockchain technology.”

Latest Update

The latest development update (May 2018) saw many contributions from across the Bitcoin Cash network, and the founding developers pride themselves on having created a community-based cryptocurrency that can be further developed by anyone.

A claim that is made by Bitcoin Cash is that it has the most robust blockchain in the world as well as the best safety features available to users. It has drawn on many of the great benefits of the original Bitcoin blockchain technology and has sought to enhance anything that might be deemed as a security flaw within the existing technology.

To this end, Bitcoin Cash supporters are confident that their technology is the future of cryptocurrency. But only that, they also claim it is the most reliable and secure crypto available on the market today.

For more information on the conflict between Roger Ver (supporting Bitcoin Cash) and Craig Wright (supporting Bitcoin Cash SV), read here.