Bitcoin Cash
Bitcoin Cash is a cryptocurrency that is a fork of
Bitcoin. Bitcoin Cash is a spin-off or altcoin that was created in 2017.
In November 2018, Bitcoin Cash split into two
cryptocurrencies: Bitcoin Cash and Bitcoin SV.
Since its inception, Bitcoin users had maintained a common
set of rules for the cryptocurrency. In 2017 a group of bitcoin activists,
investors, entrepreneurs, developers, and largely China-based miners were
unhappy with Bitcoin's proposed SegWit improvement plans meant to increase
bitcoin's capacity and pushed forward alternative plans which would increase
the block size limit to eight megabytes through a hard fork. Segwit
controversially would later enable second layer solutions on bitcoin such as
the Lightning Network, and this controversy would eventually lead to the split
that created Bitcoin Cash. Supporters of a block size increase were more
committed to an on-chain medium of exchange function. A key difference of
opinion between Bitcoin Cash and Bitcoin camps was over the running of nodes.
Bitcoin supporters wanted to keep blocks small so that nodes could be operated
with less resources, while some large block supporters find it acceptable that
(due to large block sizes), nodes might only be run by universities, private
companies and nonprofits.
In June 2017, hardware manufacturer Bitmain, described the
would-be hard fork with the increased block size as a "contingency
plan", should the bitcoin community decide to fork implementing SegWit.
The first implementation of the software was proposed under the name Bitcoin
ABC at a conference that month. In July 2017, mining pool ViaBTC proposed the
name Bitcoin Cash. In July 2017 Roger Ver and others stated they felt that
adopting BIP 91 (that would later activate SegWit) favored people who wanted to
treat bitcoin as a digital investment rather than as a transactional currency.The
fork that created Bitcoin Cash took effect on 1 August 2017. In relation to
Bitcoin it is characterized variously as a spin-off, a strand, a product of a
hard fork, an offshoot, a clone, a second version or an altcoin.