Bitcoin Cash

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Bitcoin Cash
Bitcoin Cash.png
Logo
Ticker symbol BCH[lower-alpha 1]
Precision 10−8
Coins Unspent outputs of transactions[lower-alpha 2]
Development
Implementation(s) BitcoinABC, Bitcoin Unlimited, Bitcoin XT
Forked from Bitcoin
Website bitcoincash.org
Ledger
Genesis block 3 January 2009 (15 years ago) (2009-01-03)[1]
Block #1 9 January 2009 (15 years ago) (2009-01-09)[2]
First block after split (block #478559) 1 August 2017 (6 years ago) (2017-08-01)
Timestamping scheme Proof-of-work (partial hash inversion)
Hash function SHA-256
Issuance decentralized, block reward
Block reward 12.5 BCH[lower-alpha 3]
Block time 10 minutes
Block explorer blockchair.com/bitcoin-cash/blocks
Supply limit 21,000,000 BCH
Valuation
Exchange rate Decrease US$549.75 (as of 11 August 2018)[3]
Market cap Decrease US$9.50 billion (as of 11 August 2018)[3]
  1. ↑ The code "BCC" is also used on several exchanges. BCC is more commonly used as the ticker symbol for Bitconnect.
  2. ↑ any multiples of satoshi
  3. ↑ from July 2016 to approximately June 2020, halved approximately every four years

Bitcoin Cash is a cryptocurrency.[4] In mid-2017, a group of developers wanting to increase bitcoin's block size limit prepared a code change. The change, called a hard fork, took effect on 1 August 2017. As a result, the bitcoin ledger called the blockchain and the cryptocurrency split in two.[5] At the time of the fork anyone owning bitcoin was also in possession of the same number of Bitcoin Cash units.[5]

Classification

Bitcoin Cash is a cryptocurrency[6] and a payment network.[7] In relation to bitcoin it is characterized variously as a spin-off,[6] a strand,[8] a product of a hard fork,[9] an offshoot,[10] a clone,[11] a second version[12] or an altcoin.[13]

History

Rising fees on the bitcoin network contributed to a push by some in the community to create a hard fork to increase the blocksize.[14] This push came to a head in July 2017 when some members of the Bitcoin community including Roger Ver felt that adopting BIP 91 without increasing the block-size limit favored people who wanted to treat Bitcoin as a digital investment rather than as a transactional currency.[15][16] This push by some to increase the block size met a resistance. Since its inception up to July 2017, bitcoin users had maintained a common set of rules for the cryptocurrency.[15] Eventually, a group of bitcoin activists,[12]:{{{3}}} investors, entrepreneurs, developers[15]:{{{3}}} and largely China based miners were unhappy with bitcoin's proposed SegWit improvement plans meant to increase capacity and pushed forward alternative plans for a split which created Bitcoin Cash.[11] The proposed split included a plan to increase the number of transactions its ledger can process by increasing the block size limit to eight megabytes.[15][16]

The would-be hard fork with an expanded block size limit was described by hardware manufacturer Bitmain in June 2017 as a "contingency plan" should the Bitcoin community decide to fork; the first implementation of the software was proposed under the name Bitcoin ABC at a conference that month. In July 2017, the Bitcoin Cash name was proposed by mining pool ViaBTC.

In 2018 Bitcoin Core developer Cory Fields found a bug in the Bitcoin ABC software that would have allowed an attacker to create a block causing a chain split. Fields notified the development team about it and the bug was fixed.[17]

The research firm Chainanalysis noted that in May 2018, 17 largest payment processing services such as BitPay, Coinify, and GoCoin processed Bitcoin Cash payments worth of US$3.7 million, down from US$10.5 million processed in March.[18]

Bitcoin Cash is also referred to as Bcash.[19]

Trading

Bitcoin Cash trades on digital currency exchanges including Bitstamp,[20] Coinbase,[21] Gemini,[22] Kraken,[23] and ShapeShift using the Bitcoin Cash name and the BCH ticker symbol for the cryptocurrency. A few other exchanges use the BCC ticker symbol, though BCC is commonly used for Bitconnect. On 26 March 2018, OKEx removed all Bitcoin Cash trading pairs except for BCH/BTC, BCH/ETH and BCH/USDT due to "inadequate liquidity".[6] As of May 2018, daily transaction numbers for Bitcoin Cash are about one-tenth of those of bitcoin.[6]

By November 2017 the value of Bitcoin Cash, which had been as high as $900, had fallen to around $300, much of that due to people who had originally held Bitcoin selling off the Bitcoin Cash they received at the hard fork.[14] On December 20, 2017 it reached an intraday high of $4,355.62 and then fell 88% to $519.12 on August 23, 2018.[24]

Payment service providers

As of August 2018, Bitcoin Cash payments are supported by payment service providers such as BitPay, Coinify and GoCoin.[18]:{{{3}}}

See also

References

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  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  4. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  5. ↑ 5.0 5.1 Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  6. ↑ 6.0 6.1 6.2 6.3 Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  7. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  8. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  9. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  10. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  11. ↑ 11.0 11.1 Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  12. ↑ 12.0 12.1 Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  13. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  14. ↑ 14.0 14.1 Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  15. ↑ 15.0 15.1 15.2 15.3 Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  16. ↑ 16.0 16.1 Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  17. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  18. ↑ 18.0 18.1 Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  19. ↑ Bcash Nickname Sources:
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  20. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  21. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  22. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  23. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  24. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.

External links

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