Bitcoin Cash (BCH)

Bitcoin Cash (BCH) is a forked (copied) version of Bitcoin (BTC). Before jumping right into its details, it is essential to learn the basics of Bitcoin. Bitcoin is a decentralized peer-to-peer electronic cash system that took the world by storm as it was not controlled by any authority or a single institute. As the hype grew, more and more people got involved in the technology to the point where it was discovered that it had creating issues and transactional bottenecks and something was needed to address the scalability issues of Bitcoin. Now, the thing that needed to be done led to the inception of a forked technology of Bitcoin, by the name of Bitcoin Cash (BCH).

Bitcoin Cash (BCH) came into being after serious concerns were raised about the scalability and speed of the Bitcoin Network, so much that it was agreed that its future was in jeopardy. Therefore, Bitcoin Cash (BCH) forked (copied) off the main Bitcoin (BTC) in August 2017. The purpose behind it was to address the aforementioned issues relating to Bitcoin. Bitcoin Cash fixed the mining limitation linked with Bitcoin. Previously, what used to happen was that the transactional fees rose to very high levels when there was a massive inflow of transaction requests. Bitcoin Cash increased the block size of the mining block from 1MB to 8MB so that more transactions could be processed per second. In November 2018, Bitcoin Cash (BCH) also forked into two newer versions, namely Bitcoin ABC (BCHABC) and Bitcoin-Satoshi-Vision (BSV) (CryptoChief, 2019).

The current technology of Bitcoin Cash (BCH) is undoubtedly superior to the original Bitcoin and promises better performance with regards to transactions per second and network speed. Despite this, Bitcoin has maintained its position as the original and the pioneer cryptocurrency technology. Be it brand loyalty or low key originality, but people do not accept any forked technology of the Bitcoin easily. Also, new cryptocurrencies offer better packages on the whole as compared to Bitcoin Cash (BCH).

Bitcoin Cash (BCH) separated from the Bitcoin (BTC) network due to the support and backing of mainly two leaders, Roger Ver and Jihan Wu. Roger Ver is a previous member of the Bitcoin governing community and owns the Bitcoin.com website that he’s using to promote Bitcoin Cash (BCH). Jihan Wu, on the other hand, is the CEO of Bitmain, an organization that builds mining rigs for cryptocurrencies. The fork, on the whole, received a lot of backlash and unfriendly questions as the critics questioned the motive behind choosing the name ‘Bitcoin Cash’ knowing too well that it was very similar to the original cryptocurrency ‘Bitcoin’. Critics claimed that this could lead to misguidance and deceive the newcomers into thinking that Bitcoin Cash is the original Bitcoin (de, 2018).

Shortly after, Bitmain wanted to be out of the Bitcoin Cash conspiracy after its main investors, IDG Capital and Sequoia Capital (investment and capital firms) claimed that Jihan Wu has misrepresented, misquoted and misinterpreted the proposal and progress numbers (Drake, 2019).

Not much is known about a developing team.

The main development of the Bitcoin Cash (BCH) code and the network was set up in the year 2018 under Roger Ver, but now that has almost come to a halt. Especially after Bitcoin Cash (BCH) forked into two separate cryptocurrencies, there have been no developments on the Bitcoin Cash (BCH) network. Although minor changes are committed to the code, none of them can be considered a major upgrade that promises better things.

As disappointing as it may sound, the realistic prediction about Bitcoin Cash is that it is likely to perish sooner or later. This is because the main founding company Bitmain (Crypto Miner) has abandoned Bitcoin Cash (BCH) under its new CEO. The community is getting largely uninterested, the code development is sloppy and security concerns regarding the 51% hijacking attacks are being raised.

In an attempt to save the sinking ship, Bitcoin Cash (BCH) is looking to initiate a project that will update the cryptographic algorithms with Schnorr Signatures (cryptographic scheme known for its simplicity). This might help the Bitcoin Cash (BCH) network to improve its scalability and practicality, but there is no guarantee that this will truly save the ship from sinking.

The potential of the current Bitcoin Cash (BCH) network is dispiriting. However, if the team manages to enter into a big strategic partnership, it can create an ecosystem that will attract new mining companies, new businesses and a whole lot of new users.

Bitcoin Cash (BCH), now Bitcoin Cash ABC, has always been in the news for the wrong reason, and for that reason has started to lose its integrity over time. One such incident took place in May 2019. An intentional upgrade was planned and announced that was supposed to enhance the performance of the Bitcoin Cash (BCH) network. Normally, such activities are controlled by the mining groups who have the potential to push new upgrades, deny upgrades, and initiate upgrades from the community. BTC.top is a company that controls over 51% of the hashing power of Bitcoin Cash (BCH) (Memoria, 2019). BTC.top misused its power on 15 May 2019 by hijacking a mining block previously controlled by another company called Prohashing. As a reaction, Prohashing called it out and announced the very next day that they would cease all Bitcoin Cash (BCH) mining from immediate effect (Hertig, 2019).

The community is a minor portion of the original community of the giant-group Bitcoin. Lately, lesser activity has been recorded as a lot of users in the community have a hard time trusting the coin based on the bad press it has gathered in its short stay. Also, with the on-going negative developments going around Bitcoin Cash (BCH), the community members are finding it more difficult to defend the decisions of their leader Roger Ver.

Bitcoin Cash (BCH) managed to bag some partnerships, mainly because the technology had the original Bitcoin as its predecessor. In 2019, Bitcoin Cash (BCH) announced a partnership with the Minecraft-like gaming website https://www.craft.cash. The website started to accept Bitcoin Cash (BCH) as a transactional medium and has since processed about 550,000 transactions which account for nearly 50% of total Bitcoin Cash (BCH) transactions (Redman, 2018).

Another partnership to acknowledge Bitcoin Cash (BCH) was with Cheap Air, who started accepting many other cryptocurrencies as well as Ethereum, Bitcoin, Dash and Litecoin (Trust Nodes, 2019).

Bitcoin Cash also landed into a major agreement with BitPay, which allowed the Bitcoin Cash (BCH) users to create Bitcoin Cash wallets in May 2019. This was a major breakthrough with regard to customer services of Bitcoin Cash (BCH) (James, 2019).

Bitcoin Cash (BCH) intends to actualize the main vision of the original Bitcoin (BTC), which is to become the main recognized cryptocurrency that will serve as digital cash used for transactions. However, the popularity of the original Bitcoin has overshadowed the performance of all of its forked versions and has restrained them from becoming mainstream. For this reason, Bitcoin Cash (BCH) has not been able to gain widespread acceptance, Also, there are much better options and substitutes to Bitcoin Cash that offer enhanced solutions for scalability, privacy, and network speed.