About Bitcoin Cash
Worlds most robust blockchain technology.The Best Money in the World
Bitcoin Cash brings sound money to the world, fulfilling the original promise of Bitcoin as "Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash". Merchants and users are empowered with low fees and reliable confirmations. The future shines brightly with unrestricted growth, global adoption, permissionless innovation, and decentralized development.
All Bitcoin holders as of block 478558 are also owners of Bitcoin Cash. All are welcome to join the Bitcoin Cash community as we move forward in creating sound money accessible to the whole world.
May 2018 Network Upgrade
The Bitcoin Cash network will undergo a protocol upgrade on May 15th 2018. Businesses and individuals who use the Bitcoin Cash network should check to ensure that their software is compatible with the upgrade. A specification is available, and the upgrade is being tested on testnet. This upgrade is the first of planned series of protocol upgrades announced late 2017 by several developer groups.
New Features
On Chain Scalability - Bitcoin Cash follows the Nakamoto roadmap of global adoption with on-chain scaling. As a first step, the blocksize limit has been made adjustable, with an increased default of 8MB. Research is underway to allow massive future increases.
New Transaction Signatures - A new SigHash type provides replay protection, improved hardware wallet security, and elimination of the quadratic hashing problem.
New Difficulty Adjustment Algorithm (DAA) - Responsive Proof-of-Work difficulty adjustment allows miners to migrate from the legacy Bitcoin chain as desired, while providing protection against hashrate fluctuations.
Decentralized Development - With multiple independent teams of developers providing software implementations, the future is secure. Bitcoin Cash is resistant to political and social attacks on protocol development. No single group or project can control it. The bitcoin-ml mailing list is a good venue for making proposals for changes that require coordination across development teams. Workgroups have been set up to assist developers to coordinate and seek peer-review. For those wishing to implement changes to the Bitcoin Cash protocol, it is recommended to seek early peer-review and engage collaboratively with other developers through the workgroups.
Since
its launch, Bitcoin faced pressure from community members on the topic
of scalability. Specifically, that the size of blocks - set at 1
megabyte (MB), or a million bytes, in 2010 - would slow down transaction
processing times, thus limiting the currencys potential, just as it
was gaining in popularity. The block size limit was added to the Bitcoin
code in order to prevent spam attacks on the network at a time when the
value of a Bitcoins was low. By 2015, the value of Bitcoins had
increased substantially and average block size had reached 600 bytes,
creating a scenario in which transaction times could run into delays as
more blocks reached maximum capacity.
[ Bitcoin prices depend on a wide range of dynamics, including scalability and security issues, as well as simple supply and demand dynamics. If youre interested in trading cryptocurrencies, Investopedias Crypto Trading Course provides a comprehensive overview of the topic, covering subjects like crypto basics, researching coins, technical analysis techniques, various exchanges, and other need-to-know topics to be a successful trader. ]
A number of proposals have been made to deal with transaction processing over the years, often focusing on increasing block size. Because the Bitcoin code is not managed by a central authority, changes to the code require buy-in from developers and miners. This consensus-driven approach can lead to proposals taking a long time to finalize. This has resulted in groups creating separate blockchain ledgers using new standards, called a fork. Several forks, such as Bitcoin XT and Bitcoin Unlimited, failed to be adopted by a wide audience. Bitcoin Cash, launched in August 2017, is another fork from Bitcoin Classic.
Bitcoin Cash differs from Bitcoin Classic in that it increases the block size from 1 MB to 8 MB. It also removes Segregated Witness (SegWit), a proposed code adjustment designed to free up block space by removing certain parts of the transaction. The goal of Bitcoin Cash is to increase the number of transactions that can be processed, and supporters hope that this change will allow Bitcoin Cash to compete with the volume of transactions that PayPal and Visa can handle by increasing the size of blocks.
Because the computer power required to process larger blocks could price out some smaller miners, critics worry that adopting Bitcoin Cashs approach will lead to power being concentrated in the hands of companies that can afford more and better equipment. Opponents to the fork worry that this will threaten the consensus-driven approach to Bitcoin, as a small number of companies could control Bitcoin and more readily force changes on the community in the future.
A successful hard fork for Bitcoin Cash entails surviving long enough to entice individuals and companies to use and mine the new digital currency if it is able to build substantial interest and reach critical mass. Once this point is reached, however, Bitcoin Cash may find that its success has prompted others to develop their own alternative coins, which would put the same pressure on Bitcoin Cash that it had placed on Bitcoin Classic. Since the issue of scalability tends to be at the forefront of cryptocurrency debates, developers have made increasing block size and improving transaction processing speeds their top focus areas.
[ Bitcoin prices depend on a wide range of dynamics, including scalability and security issues, as well as simple supply and demand dynamics. If youre interested in trading cryptocurrencies, Investopedias Crypto Trading Course provides a comprehensive overview of the topic, covering subjects like crypto basics, researching coins, technical analysis techniques, various exchanges, and other need-to-know topics to be a successful trader. ]
A number of proposals have been made to deal with transaction processing over the years, often focusing on increasing block size. Because the Bitcoin code is not managed by a central authority, changes to the code require buy-in from developers and miners. This consensus-driven approach can lead to proposals taking a long time to finalize. This has resulted in groups creating separate blockchain ledgers using new standards, called a fork. Several forks, such as Bitcoin XT and Bitcoin Unlimited, failed to be adopted by a wide audience. Bitcoin Cash, launched in August 2017, is another fork from Bitcoin Classic.
Bitcoin Cash differs from Bitcoin Classic in that it increases the block size from 1 MB to 8 MB. It also removes Segregated Witness (SegWit), a proposed code adjustment designed to free up block space by removing certain parts of the transaction. The goal of Bitcoin Cash is to increase the number of transactions that can be processed, and supporters hope that this change will allow Bitcoin Cash to compete with the volume of transactions that PayPal and Visa can handle by increasing the size of blocks.
Because the computer power required to process larger blocks could price out some smaller miners, critics worry that adopting Bitcoin Cashs approach will lead to power being concentrated in the hands of companies that can afford more and better equipment. Opponents to the fork worry that this will threaten the consensus-driven approach to Bitcoin, as a small number of companies could control Bitcoin and more readily force changes on the community in the future.
A successful hard fork for Bitcoin Cash entails surviving long enough to entice individuals and companies to use and mine the new digital currency if it is able to build substantial interest and reach critical mass. Once this point is reached, however, Bitcoin Cash may find that its success has prompted others to develop their own alternative coins, which would put the same pressure on Bitcoin Cash that it had placed on Bitcoin Classic. Since the issue of scalability tends to be at the forefront of cryptocurrency debates, developers have made increasing block size and improving transaction processing speeds their top focus areas.