Bitcoin Cash (BCH)

Bitcoin Cash (BCH) is a peer-to-peer cryptocurrency that operates on its own blockchain, created on August 1, 2017, through a hard fork of the Bitcoin blockchain.¹ Bitcoin Cash was created by a coalition of developers, miners, and businesses who believed that Bitcoin should scale primarily through larger blocks processed directly on-chain, in contrast to the approach favored by Bitcoin's core developers, who prioritized off-chain scaling solutions such as the Lightning Network alongside the Segregated Witness (SegWit) protocol upgrade.²³ Like Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash uses a proof-of-work consensus mechanism and has a fixed maximum supply of 21 million coins.⁴⁵ As of mid-2026, BCH ranks among the largest cryptocurrencies by market capitalization, though it trades at a small fraction of Bitcoin's price and value.⁶⁷

Overview

Ticker	BCH
Category	Smart Contract Platform
Website	https://bch.info/
Telegram	bchchannel
Reddit	https://www.reddit.com/r/btc

Bitcoin Cash shares its transaction history with Bitcoin up to the moment of the August 2017 split; any person who held bitcoin (BTC) at the time of the fork received an equivalent balance of BCH.⁸ Since the fork, the two networks have diverged both technically and philosophically. Bitcoin Cash's defining technical distinction from Bitcoin is a substantially larger block size limit, which its proponents argue allows the network to process a greater number of transactions per block and thereby keep transaction fees low, supporting its stated goal of functioning as "peer-to-peer electronic cash," a phrase drawn from the subtitle of the original Bitcoin whitepaper published by the pseudonymous Satoshi Nakamoto.⁹¹⁰

Where Bitcoin's block size has remained capped at 1 megabyte since 2010 (with SegWit later providing an effective increase in transaction capacity without directly raising the base block size), Bitcoin Cash raised its block size limit to 8 megabytes at launch and further increased it to 32 megabytes in May 2018.²⁹ Supporters of Bitcoin Cash's approach have argued that this design keeps transaction fees minimal — often cited at a small fraction of a cent to a few cents per transaction — compared with the higher fees Bitcoin has periodically experienced during periods of network congestion.⁹

History

The block size debate and the 2017 fork

Bitcoin Cash emerged from a multi-year controversy within the Bitcoin community commonly referred to as the "block size war," which took place roughly between 2015 and 2017.⁹ Bitcoin's original 1 megabyte block size limit, introduced by Satoshi Nakamoto in 2010 as an anti-spam measure, became a source of growing controversy as transaction volume increased through the mid-2010s.⁹ By mid-2017, the Bitcoin network was reportedly experiencing backlogs exceeding 200,000 unconfirmed transactions at times, with fees for some transactions rising sharply.⁹

Two broad camps emerged in response. One camp, often called "small blockers," favored addressing scalability primarily through off-chain and layered solutions, such as the Lightning Network, combined with the SegWit upgrade, which altered how transaction data was counted toward the block size limit; this group argued that increasing the base block size risked reducing the number of people able to run a full network node, thereby undermining decentralization.² The opposing camp, often called "big blockers," argued that Bitcoin should scale primarily through larger on-chain blocks in order to preserve low fees and fulfil what they viewed as Bitcoin's original purpose as a medium of everyday electronic payment, and viewed a block size increase as a comparatively low-risk, immediate solution.⁹¹⁰

After the activation of SegWit in August 2017 — an event some in the big-blocker camp derisively referred to prompted their departure — the big-blocker faction executed a hard fork of the Bitcoin blockchain on August 1, 2017, at block height 478,558 (or 478,559, depending on the source), creating Bitcoin Cash as a new, separate cryptocurrency and network.¹¹¹²³ The initial implementation set Bitcoin Cash's block size limit at 8 megabytes.² BCH began trading on major exchanges the same day, with reported opening prices in the range of roughly $240 to $300.¹² In May 2018, the network underwent a further hard fork that raised the block size limit to 32 megabytes and introduced several other protocol changes.²

Split into Bitcoin ABC and Bitcoin SV (2018)

Tensions within the Bitcoin Cash development community grew through 2018, culminating in a second, more contentious hard fork in November 2018. The dispute centered on a scheduled protocol upgrade proposed by Bitcoin ABC — at the time the dominant Bitcoin Cash software client, led by developer Amaury Séchet and backed by prominent figures including early Bitcoin investor Roger Ver and Bitmain co-founder Jihan Wu — which included a feature called Canonical Transaction Ordering (CTOR).¹³ An opposing faction, calling itself Bitcoin SV ("Satoshi's Vision"), was led by Craig Wright, an Australian computer scientist who has claimed, without providing conclusive evidence, to be Bitcoin's pseudonymous creator Satoshi Nakamoto, together with Calvin Ayre, a businessman who ran one of the largest Bitcoin Cash mining pools at the time.¹³¹⁴ Bitcoin SV opposed CTOR and favored other changes, including a much larger block size increase to 128 megabytes.¹⁴

As the November 15, 2018 upgrade approached, both sides publicly pledged to direct mining hash power toward ensuring their preferred chain would prevail, a standoff that came to be known as the "hash war."¹³¹⁵ Wright threatened that he would be willing to redirect resources, including selling personal Bitcoin holdings, to fund the fight, and at one point suggested he might attempt a 51% attack against the opposing chain if necessary.¹⁶¹³ Ver's Bitcoin.com mining pool redirected hash power toward supporting the Bitcoin ABC chain, as did pools associated with Jihan Wu.¹⁵¹⁴ The conflict produced weeks of public acrimony between the two camps, including allegations of market manipulation exchanged between Wright and Ver.¹⁷ The fork ultimately produced two separate, permanently split blockchains: Bitcoin Cash, which continued under the Bitcoin ABC implementation, and Bitcoin SV, a new and separate cryptocurrency.¹⁸¹³ Several prominent figures involved in the episode, including Ver, Wu, and Kraken chief executive Jesse Powell, were later named in a civil antitrust lawsuit alleging market manipulation connected to the fork; a Florida federal court dismissed the complaint in 2021.¹⁹

The Infrastructure Funding Plan and the Bitcoin Cash Node split (2020)

A further, though comparatively less disruptive, split occurred in November 2020. Bitcoin ABC, still led by Amaury Séchet and still the dominant node software at the time, proposed an "Infrastructure Funding Plan" (IFP), sometimes called the "coinbase rule" or "miner tax," under which a percentage of newly mined BCH block rewards would be automatically redirected to a development fund to finance ongoing protocol development, rather than relying solely on voluntary donations.²⁰²¹ The proposal, originally suggested by mining-pool operator Jiang Zhuoer of BTC.TOP at around 12.5% of block rewards, was revised downward in subsequent iterations, eventually settling at 8% in Bitcoin ABC's implementation.²²²³²⁴

The plan drew substantial opposition from parts of the Bitcoin Cash community and mining ecosystem, who objected both to the concept of an automatic, protocol-enforced payment to a specific group of developers and to concerns about the governance implications of concentrating funding decisions in Bitcoin ABC.²⁵²⁶ In response, a group of developers created an alternative client called Bitcoin Cash Node (BCHN), which mirrored Bitcoin ABC's codebase but removed the IFP funding mechanism.²⁷ When the network's scheduled six-monthly upgrade activated in mid-November 2020, the disagreement resulted in a chain split: nodes running Bitcoin ABC's software, which enforced the IFP, followed one chain, while the substantially larger share of miners and infrastructure providers who adopted Bitcoin Cash Node's rules continued on a separate chain.²⁴²⁸ The Bitcoin Cash Node chain retained the "Bitcoin Cash" name and the BCH ticker, as it secured the overwhelming majority of hash power and ecosystem support following the split, while the Bitcoin ABC chain continued as a separate, much smaller project.²⁶

Technical characteristics

Block size and throughput

Bitcoin Cash's central technical distinction is its block size limit, which was raised from Bitcoin's 1 megabyte to 8 megabytes at the network's 2017 launch and then to 32 megabytes in May 2018.² Proponents argue that this design allows Bitcoin Cash to process a substantially higher number of transactions per block than Bitcoin, supporting the network's stated aim of remaining suitable for small, frequent, everyday payments at low cost.⁹

Mining and monetary policy

Bitcoin Cash uses the same SHA-256 proof-of-work mining algorithm as Bitcoin, meaning that miners can technically redirect hash power between the two networks depending on relative profitability.²⁶ It also shares Bitcoin's fixed total supply cap of 21 million coins and a similar halving schedule that periodically reduces the block reward paid to miners.⁴⁵ As of mid-2026, the circulating supply of BCH stood at approximately 19.97–20 million coins, close to the maximum supply.²⁹⁷

Later protocol developments

Since the 2020 split, Bitcoin Cash Node has continued to serve as the network's dominant software implementation, with the Bitcoin Cash community continuing a practice of regularly scheduled network upgrades. Later development efforts on Bitcoin Cash have included work on features such as CashAddr, an address-formatting standard intended to visually distinguish BCH addresses from BTC addresses, and CashTokens, a framework introduced to enable the issuance of fungible and non-fungible tokens directly on the Bitcoin Cash blockchain, an effort aimed at extending the network's functionality closer to that offered by smart-contract platforms.

Bitcoin Cash's regular six-monthly upgrade cadence, a practice inherited from the Bitcoin ABC era and continued under Bitcoin Cash Node, has also distinguished it from Bitcoin's typically slower and more conservative approach to protocol changes, where upgrades are often the subject of extended debate and multi-year development timelines. Supporters of Bitcoin Cash's faster upgrade cycle have argued that it allows the network to respond more quickly to changing technical requirements and community priorities, while critics have contended that frequent hard forks introduce a greater degree of protocol instability and coordination risk compared with Bitcoin's more incremental approach.

Node software and development organizations

Following the 2020 split, development of the Bitcoin Cash Node client has been carried out by a loosely organized, largely volunteer community of developers rather than a single formal company, a structure its supporters have described as more resistant to the kind of concentrated influence that contributed to the 2018 and 2020 disputes. Other, smaller software implementations of the Bitcoin Cash protocol have also existed alongside Bitcoin Cash Node at various points, including Bitcoin Unlimited and Flowee the Hub, reflecting a broader pattern within the Bitcoin Cash ecosystem of multiple independent teams maintaining interoperable but separately developed node software.

Comparison with Bitcoin

Beyond the block size difference, Bitcoin Cash and Bitcoin have followed increasingly distinct paths in terms of their public identity and market positioning. Bitcoin has, over time, become associated primarily with the idea of a scarce, non-sovereign store of value often compared to gold, an association reinforced by the growth of institutional investment vehicles built around BTC. Bitcoin Cash's advocates, by contrast, have generally continued to emphasize the network's suitability for direct, low-cost, everyday transactions, positioning it as a more literal continuation of the payments-focused vision described in Nakamoto's original whitepaper.⁹¹⁰ This divergence in branding and use case has also been reflected in relative market capitalization: while Bitcoin Cash was, in its early months, sometimes discussed as a potential rival to Bitcoin's dominant position within the cryptocurrency markets, it has since settled into a considerably smaller share of total cryptocurrency market value, generally ranking outside the top ten largest cryptocurrencies by market capitalization in recent years.⁶⁵

Bitcoin Cash reached its all-time high price during the broader cryptocurrency market peak of December 2017, trading as high as roughly $3,785 to $4,356, depending on the exchange and data source used.²⁹⁷ The token subsequently fell sharply during the ensuing bear market, at one point trading as low as roughly $75 to $90 in late 2018.³⁷ BCH's price has continued to fluctuate substantially in the years since, at times exceeding $600 during periods of renewed market enthusiasm and falling below $100 during prolonged downturns.³³⁰

As of mid-2026, sources reported BCH trading in a range of approximately $200 to $450, with a circulating market capitalization variously reported between roughly $4 billion and $9 billion, placing it among the top twenty to twenty-five cryptocurrencies by that measure at different points during the year.^3129657 BCH has consistently ranked among the more widely accepted cryptocurrencies for merchant payments, a status its supporters attribute to its low transaction fees and its branding around everyday payment use.³²

Legal and governance controversies

Roger Ver's tax case

Roger Ver, an early and vocal Bitcoin investor who became one of Bitcoin Cash's most prominent public advocates — sometimes nicknamed "Bitcoin Jesus" — was arrested in Spain in April 2024 pursuant to a United States indictment alleging mail fraud, tax evasion, and the filing of false tax returns.³³³⁴ Prosecutors alleged that after Ver renounced his U.S. citizenship in 2014 and obtained citizenship in Saint Kitts and Nevis, he failed to properly report and pay a required "exit tax" on capital gains associated with his substantial Bitcoin holdings, which at the time were reported to total around 131,000 BTC, and separately understated the value of Bitcoin assets transferred from his companies in 2017.³³³⁵ The U.S. government alleged the scheme caused an estimated tax loss of approximately $48–50 million.³⁵³⁶ Ver contested the charges and sought extradition relief, and in October 2025 reached a deferred prosecution agreement with the U.S. Department of Justice under which he agreed to pay approximately $49.9 million in back taxes, penalties, and interest and admitted to willfully failing to report cryptocurrency holdings; in exchange, the government agreed to dismiss the underlying indictment if the terms of the agreement were met.³⁶³⁷

Governance and decentralization debates

Bitcoin Cash's repeated history of contentious hard forks — most notably the 2018 split with Bitcoin SV and the 2020 split that produced Bitcoin Cash Node — has periodically drawn criticism from outside observers as illustrative of the practical governance challenges that can arise in cryptocurrency networks whose protocol rules can be altered through coordinated action by developers, miners, and businesses.²⁸ Critics have specifically pointed to episodes such as the 2020 Infrastructure Funding Plan dispute as evidence of the tension between funding sustainable protocol development and preserving a permissionless, "miner-tax-free" monetary design that some in the community consider core to Bitcoin-derived networks' value proposition.²⁵²⁶

Reception and use cases

Bitcoin Cash's advocates frame the network primarily as a payments-oriented cryptocurrency, emphasizing low, predictable transaction fees and faster confirmation of everyday purchases relative to Bitcoin, and the network has been cited as maintaining a leading position among cryptocurrencies by reported merchant acceptance.³² Critics and observers outside the Bitcoin Cash community, however, have frequently contrasted this payments-focused positioning with Bitcoin's evolution toward being viewed primarily as a store of value or "digital gold," and have questioned the extent of real-world commercial adoption relative to Bitcoin Cash's stated ambitions.¹⁰ The network's price and adoption trajectory since 2017 has, in the view of some market analysts, reflected this bifurcated outlook: while Bitcoin Cash retains a meaningful share of cryptocurrency market capitalization and an active developer and merchant community, it has not displaced Bitcoin's dominant market position, and its price remains substantially below its 2017 all-time high in both nominal and relative terms.³²⁷

Footnotes