Bitcoin Cash was created after a hard fork in the Bitcoin blockchain and implemented an increased block size of 8 MB with a goal of confirming transactions even faster and including more transactions into each block. As such, Bitcoin (BTC) and Bitcoin Cash (BCH) are two different and independent currencies. Bitcoin Cash should not be sent to Bitcoin addresses, and vice versa. Before getting into our topic, we need to explain the difference between Bitcoin (BTC) and Bitcoin Cash (BCH). We can safely say that there is a war raging between both these coins at the moment. Of course, that competition is just improving the financial world.
As a matter of fact, Bitcoin Cash originated from Bitcoin. Once upon a time it was a part of the Bitcoin blockchain. In the crypto circles, BCH is known as a “fork” of bitcoin. We will explain in detail what a “fork” is below. You can learn more about the blockchain technology right HERE. Additionally, before mentioning the difference between these two coins, we will talk a little bit about their history. Many experts believe that BCH is a better digital asset because of several advantages it has. However, we will cover all of that below. For total novices in the crypto world, we suggest heading over to this Bitcoin Dictionary section and learning about the basics.
History
Bitcoin was the first ever cryptocurrency and for many years it wasn’t very known. It is just like any other real currency. You can use it to buy, sell and trade for goods, services, investments and more. The blockchain technology that it’s made of prevents it from being counterfeited. It also means it is not owned, issued or controlled by any one single group or party. Today, Bitcoin is the most valuable cryptocurrency on the market. Other currencies are attempting to outrank Bitcoin and reduce its dominance over the digital-coin sector; however, only few are getting close.
On the other hand, Bitcoin Cash was created much later. BCH is a cryptocurrency with its own blockchain. It works just like a digital currency and new BCH is created through mining. It was created at the end of 2016, making it much younger than Bitcoin. However, as we said above, it was “forked” from the BTC. Basically, the creators of BTC wanted to make changes to bitcoin but not all of them could agree on the details. For that reason, some of them “forked” bitcoin so they could create a new version of the same code but it would hold their own modifications. That’s how BCH was born.
Changes
- Cheaper transfer fees (around $0.20 per transaction), meaning, transactions in BCH will save you more money than using BTC.
- BCH has faster transfer times. So, you don’t have to wait the 10 minutes it takes to verify a Bitcoin transaction!
- BCH can handle more transactions per second. This means that more people can use BCH at the same time than they could with BTC.
Bitcoin
Bitcoin was the first ever cryptocurrency and for many years it wasn’t very known. It is just like any other real currency. You can use it to buy, sell and trade for goods, services, investments and more. The blockchain technology that it’s made of prevents it from being counterfeited. It also means it is not owned, issued or controlled by any one single group or party. For example, the US dollar is issued by the US government and is controlled by banks. In this scenario, the central party are the government and the banks. When you transfer dollars to a friend, you are relying on the bank to authorize and process the transaction. The total number of Bitcoin that will ever exist is limited to 21 million.
Today, Bitcoin is the most valuable cryptocurrency currently on the market. While other currencies are attempting to outrank BTC and reduce its dominance over the digital-coin sector, BCH may be an exception to that due to the difference between Bitcoin and Bitcoin Cash! As BCH is a fork of BTC, we have to explain what a fork actually is.
Fork
As we promised, we will also explain what a “fork” is in the crypto world. Basically, a fork is created when the original code of a blockchain is updated but only some of the nodes (computers) on the blockchain accept the update. So, they all start as bitcoin but then the implemented changes make them something else. There are many bitcoin forks out there; however, none are as popular as Bitcoin cash. Anyone holding the original coin at the time it was forked will automatically get the forked version of the coin they were holding. So, when Bitcoin forked to Bitcoin Cash, someone who had 10 BTC received a certain number of BCH with the same value as their 10 BTC.
Bitcoin Cash
Like Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash is a cryptocurrency with its own blockchain. It works just like a digital currency and new BCH (Bitcoin Cash) is created through Bitcoin Cash mining. It was created at the end of 2016, making it much younger than Bitcoin.
Bitcoin was forked to create Bitcoin Cash because the developers of Bitcoin wanted to make some important changes to Bitcoin. The developers of the Bitcoin community could not come to an agreement concerning some of the changes that they wanted to make. So, a small group of these developers forked Bitcoin to create a new version of the same code with a few modifications.
Difference Between Bitcoin and Bitcoin Cash
Finally, we get to the part where we will explain the major differences between these two coins. The first and most important one is the size of the block. Bitcoin Cash increased it’s block to 32 MB while Bitcoin still has it’s initial 2 MB. This basically affects the miners who are mining both coins. BCH’s bigger block means that you will mine a larger amount of BCH in a shorter period of time than you would BTC. So basically, Bitcoin’s much higher price is what’s keeping it at the top. Because, if BCH comes closer to it in price, it would be a much more viable crypto asset.
The next very important difference is the transaction volume per day. For instance, regular banks process over 100 million transactions per day. Let’s take Visa for example, as they do something over 150 million transactions a day. If we reduce that to seconds, statistics show that Visa is doing over 24,000 transactions per second. Bitcoin, on the other hand, can handle about 7 transactions per second. Processing a transaction takes 10 minutes on average. Now, as Bitcoin users go up, waiting times are lengthened because there are more transactions to process without a change being made in the technology responsible for processing them. The changes made to Bitcoin cash allow much faster transactions and there is no need to wait for those 10 minutes.
What are the similarities and differences, advantages and disadvantages between the two?
- Bitcoin Cash has cheaper transfer fees (around $0.20 per transaction), so making transactions in BCH will save you more money than using BTC. A BTC transaction can cost around $1 USD per transaction, although it previously went up to around $25 per transaction!
- BCH has faster transfer times. So, you don’t have to wait the 10 minutes it takes to verify a Bitcoin transaction!
- BCH can handle more transactions per second. This means that more people can use BCH at the same time than they can with BTC.
All these changes are due to the fact that a Bitcoin Cash block (in the blockchain) is eight times bigger than a Bitcoin block. This makes BCH faster, cheaper and more scalable than Bitcoin. Bitcoin cash is becoming more and more adopted by the day because of this.
Bitcoin Advantages Over Bitcoin Cash
As the original cryptocurrency, Bitcoin is the base currency of the entire sector. It is what all other cryptocurrencies trade against (as well as ETH, most of the time) and is tradable on most exchanges. Bitcoin is the most popular and has the most trading pairs with other cryptocurrencies. As of 2021, Bitcoin is currently worth 57.3% of the entire crypto industry. The biggest advantage Bitcoin has over Bitcoin Cash is its community and cult-like following: it’s the first cryptocurrency anyone hears about.
This is the main reason why BCH is still far behind BTC even though the technology behind it is much more advanced. However, we have to note that BCH has been on the market for only a short period of time. If it continues with this approach and gets many investors in the future, BCH could hope to pass BTC several years down the road. This is, of course, if Bitcoin developers don’t make much needed changes to their product.
Bitcoin Disadvantages Over Bitcoin Cash
The disadvantages of Bitcoin when compared to Bitcoin Cash mainly regard the scalability issues facing Bitcoin. Bitcoin is older, slower and costs a lot more per transaction. It is likely that as the sector grows, Bitcoin will continue to lose its dominance to these other coins.
Another disadvantage is that the core development team of Bitcoin is not united as good as other crypto teams, like that of Ether, for example. They appear to be divided as a group and lacking clear leadership. This makes the implementation of scaling solutions more difficult to agree on and implement to the network — not good at all!
We hope that you now know the basic differences between Bitcoin and Bitcoin Cash. For more bitcoin topics and guides, you can always check this Crypto Information section. The Coinbet24 Bitcoin Casino gives you an opportunity to place bitcoin bets. You can use your BTC to make bets anytime.