There’s an event in a blockchain network where a part of it is split or forked and then forms a separate blockchain network. This is what happened to Bitcoin in 2017, and this led to the coming up of two separate coins that are now ranking as the first and fourth cryptocurrencies in the market by market capitalization. They are Bitcoin and Bitcoin cash, and we’re here to talk about their differences.
Even if Bitcoin is regarded as the most popular, most sought after, and most valuable cryptocurrency in the market right now, Bitcoin cash claims to be better than the OG.
Bitcoin vs. Bitcoin Cash
Bitcoin cash first appeared as a fork of the blockchain on August 1, 2017. This fork was backed by a group of miners, Bitcoin developers, and user community who didn’t like the proposed implementation of segregated witness, or SegWit.
This proposed upgrade was created and designed to aid in solving the problems of scalability affecting the network during that time. At the establishment of the new coin, Bitcoin cash supporters and proponents posited that it was necessary to fulfill the visions by Satoshi Nakamoto, who is the still-unidentified creator of Bitcoin, in the white paper.
What they wanted and needed was to obtain a cryptocurrency that would follow decentralization and provide high volume transaction network, as well as reduce fees, in order for more people to use the coin.
Simply put, they have felt that Bitcoin was no longer decentralized and it was too slow and expensive or users.
SegWit
For the supporters of Bitcoin cash, the SegWit proposal wasn’t enough as a solution to the question of scalability. In addition, it was against Satoshi’s visions, especially with off-chain solutions.
And even fit the upgrade was successfully done, the supporters of Bitcoin cash believed that the progression was still lacking in transparency and would undermine the blockchain’s decentralized nature and democracy.
In other words, the difference is that Bitcoin opted to implement SegWit and sports Lightning Network, while the Bitcoin cash community pursues an on-chain scalability.
Other Differences
One of their main differences is the block size. For Bitcoin, it’s 1MB. For Bitcoin cash, it’s an adjustable size of 8MB. The recent upgrades have made that higher, up as high as 32MB block.
On the Bitcoin side, it’s using Layer 2 implementations like Lightning Network as a solution to scalability issues. On the flip side, Bitcoin cash use bigger blocks for faster and cheaper transactions.
Bigger blocks are on-chain solutions, and they allow millions of transactions per day. In a similar fashion, Lightning Network could potentially enable millions of transactions after the implementation is finished.
The on-chain scalability provides Bitcoin cash the ability to take more transactions than the not-yet fully implemented off-chain method. At present, Bitcoin cash seems to be better than Bitcoin when it comes to speed, commanding more traffic.
Coming from Bitcoin cash developers, they want a reliable, cheap, and highly scalable network that will boost the adoption of the coin into mainstream usage.
