Bitcoin Cash successfully completes Hard Fork to 32 MegaByte blocks

At 4:00 pm (UTC time) on May 15, the Bitcoin Cash Network ran a hard fork. The software upgrade brings old functions back into the BCH ecosystem and increases the block size to 32 megabytes. Roger Ver, advocate of Bitcoin-Hard-Fork, is optimistic about the BCH price development by the end of the year.

A higher block limit
The biggest news of the Hard Fork was the fourfold increase in block size. In August 2017, Bitcoin Cash had already raised the limit from 1 MegaByte to 8 MegaByte. Now these 8 megabytes have been raised to 32 megabytes. Thus, the Bitcoin-Cash network should be able to handle over 60 transactions per second. Thus, with an average transaction size of 200 bytes, a block can accommodate 160,000 transactions. Over 20 million transactions per day can now take place.

Currently there are approximately 20,000 transactions per day on the Bitcoin Cash Blockchain. The daily capacity is currently only 0.087 percent maxed out. The website TXHighway visualizes the transactions of the Bitcoin and Bitcoin cash blockchain. Although the Bitcoin Cash Highway now has "32 lanes", but the "cars" drive there only sparsely.

Critics of the Big Blocks repeatedly point out that increasing block size can lead to centralization. For example, the cost of running a full node increases and the spread of pasted blocks is delayed (one megabyte is downloaded faster than 32 megabytes). Currently, more transactions are processed in the Bitcoin network than in Bitcoin Cash.

Functional extensions
In addition to the increased block size, the Bitcoin cash hard fork also enables scripting commands such as OP_GROUP and OP_RETURN. OP_GROUP can be used for the creation of own tokens on the BCH blockchain itself. This means that Bitcoin Cash gets a functionality similar to Ethereum. With OP_RETURN additional information can be stored on the blockchain. This feature could be used for smart contracts in BCH.

The price after the Hard Fork
Although there was a lot of excitement surrounding Hard Fork in the Bitcoin Cash ecosystem, the price was negative for the software upgrade and dropped by about ten percent. It should not be forgotten, however, that the BCH price had doubled in April. However, the price level remained stable above the $ 1,000 mark.

Bitcoin Jesus, Roger Ver, is optimistic about 2018 price developments and says the BCH price could double by the end of the year.