What is Bitcoin Cash?

Bitcoin Cash is also a cryptocurrency just like many other cryptocurrencies. It came out as a resultant of the hard fork that occurred in August 2017. The concept behind it is just as bitcoin’s; it is also a peer-to-peer decentralized currency free of any government rules and policies.

Here are some of the major differences that are quite noticeable if we compare it with bitcoin.

• Its block size is 8 MB while bitcoin’s only 1 MB
• It doesn’t include SegWit (Segregated Witness)
• It doesn’t have a “replace-by-fee” feature
• It provides protection against replay attacks and wipeout
• Easier to adjust proof-of-work (PoW) than the normal block of bitcoin

As you have already learned that bitcoin cash was inherited from bitcoin, it also has many things in common, including the structure and technology.

The fork basically happened because of the problems in the block size, which was very less that it caused delays in transactions and other problems. As bitcoin has no central authority, everything was dependent on consensus and it was taking too much time to take any decision. After a long wait, it was finally the time to take a big step in the form of a hard fork which caused the creation of several forks in the form of new cryptocurrencies, some of them which were derived from the bitcoin were Bitcoin XT, Bitcoin Unlimited and Bitcoin Cash. The first two failed to get adopted by a wide audience while Bitcoin Cash secured its superior position in the world of crypto.

Rank on CoinMarketCap

It ranks 4th on the CoinMarketCap with $13,346,500,250 USD (1,599,981 BTC) market cap. The current price of bitcoin cash is $781.65 USD (0.09370470 BTC)
(15-04-2018)
These values change every second, to check latest values of bitcoin cash, Click Here

The technology behind Bitcoin Cash

The technology behind bitcoin cash is the same as bitcoin because of its past connection with it. It is also backed up by blockchain just like bitcoin. However, all the past bitcoin cash’s transactions on the new blockchain were identical to the ones on bitcoin’s blockchain, but now the structure of both these cryptocurrencies totally differ from each other.

• The proof of work (PoW) algorithm that is used by bitcoin cash is SHA256 (same as bitcoin)
• Bitcoin cash uses application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC Mining Hardware)
• All the transactions of BCH utilize an updated signature hashing known as SigHash that makes it different from bitcoin and provides protection against replay attacks

Just like bitcoin, BCH also adds a new block to the blockchain every 10 minutes (a block contains unique addresses identified by a long string of numbers and letters). The technology behind bitcoin cash, the blockchain, is not possible to hack because every block is signed and encrypted to prevent any kind of data leakage and damage.
Number of Bitcoin Cash in circulation

• 17,074,713 BCH circulating supply
• 21,000,000 BCH max supply

Bitcoin and Bitcoin Cash were separated from each other from the block#478558 on their blockchains, so every transaction that took place after that specific block have no relation with one another in any terms.

The Company behind Bitcoin Cash

Creating Bitcoin cash is not a single person’s work and neither a single company found it. It is maintained by multiple groups of programmers to make it completely decentralized in terms of software implementation. However, there are some names that contributed to making bitcoin cash something from nothing, Gavin Andresen and John McAfee are two of them. Gavin is the person to whom the bitcoin was passed to after Satoshi Nakamoto fled the scene, while John MacAfee the founder of McAfee Anti-virus software is also a big bitcoin enthusiast who supports bitcoin cash for several reasons.

Development Team:

Unlike bitcoin, there is no specific development team that developed bitcoin cash rather there exist multiple development teams that are responsible for Bitcoin Cash’s progress. This step is taken in order to make this cryptocurrency completely decentralized in development and software implementation.

Future Goals of Bitcoin Cash

As bitcoin cash was in many terms same but also different from the bitcoin classic if compared with the block size and working structure. From the day of hard fork till now, bitcoin cash has secured its high position on the crypto market and is ranked 4th on CoinMarketCap. New functionalities and upgraded technological structure of bitcoin cash make it more flexible for newcomers to invest and gain profit from it.

The major goal of bitcoin cash is to increase the number of transactions that can be processed per second so more and more people could engage with it. According to the supporters of bitcoin cash, if it succeeded in increasing the number of transactions, this will allow it to compete with the volume of transactions that PayPal and visa can manage.

Potentials of Bitcoin Cash

Bitcoin Cash is a new currency but still, it somehow managed to rank itself up just because of its numerous potentials. One of the potentials that truly make it uncomparable with bitcoin is its capability to provide protection against the replay attack and wipeout.

If you are wondering what a replay attack is, it’s an attack in which the data transmission is repeated or delayed maliciously. In terms of blockchain, if the data transmission that is taking place in one blockchain maliciously repeats itself in another blockchain, is known as a replay attack. To make it more simple consider this example: Adam is sending 3 BTC to his friend George but because of the replay attack 3 BCH will also be sent along with it, without Adam’s consent.

Here is how bitcoin cash tackles this problem:

It uses a signing algorithm known as SigHash. The SigHash algorithm only works when it gets a bit 6 set. These transactions would be invalid in other cases on the non-UAHF chain as it will consider it an invalid transaction on the different SigHasing algorithm.

Other potentials:

• Faster than bitcoin
• Safer than fiat currency
• With bitcoin cash, the international and domestic transfers are fast and cheap

Conclusion:

When bitcoin cash was founded, many exchanges didn’t take the opportunity to support it, rather they decided to ignore it. But because of its real potential, many exchanges are accepting it now and in return are giving more and more credibility and power to bitcoin cash’s value.
Miners are utilizing its potential and due to its big block size i.e. 8 MB, it enables more transactions within a single block that generates more transaction fee for all the miners out there.
For inspiration, Jihan Wu, owner of Bitmain (biggest mining infrastructure in the world) has begun to accept only bitcoin cash for payments. If you are looking to get bitcoin cash, here are some top recommended exchanges to buy it from:
• Coinbase
• GDAX
• Kraken
Cryptocurrency can never be predicted but if I compare bitcoin cash currently with its history, I see its real power and bright future ahead that can open many paths of passive income for miners and investors.