Bitcoin vs Bitcoin Cash — what’s the difference?

The Merkle

Bitcoin is the largest and most valuable cryptocurrency in the world. It began its journey with the promise of offering a fast and cheap method of payment. But Bitcoin transactions are far from cheap and fast anymore due to the currency’s technical limitations — a problem Bitcoin Cash is trying to solve.

Read: Bitcoins: Everything you need to know

So the question becomes, “What are the differences in Bitcoin vs Bitcoin Cash?” The issue with Bitcoin is the small 1 MB block size limit. This makes it painfully slow, as the currency is said to be capable of processing only seven transactions per second. For comparison, Visa can handle 24,000 transactions in the same time. Bitcoin transactions also take 10 minutes to process and have become expensive because of high demand — the average fee is more than $6.

A group of influential miners, developers, and investors were fed up with Bitcoin’s problems and concerned with its ability to scale. On August 1, 2017, they initiated what is known as a hard fork in the Bitcoin blockchain, which resulted in a new currency being born: Bitcoin Cash.

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So, how is Bitcoin Cash different than Bitcoin? The currencies are similar in many ways. They both hold value, allowing you to spend them on all sorts of goodies or use them for investment purposes.

What makes them different is that Bitcoin Cash has a block size limit of 8 MB — eight times more than Bitcoin. This allows it to process more transactions per day, speed up processing times, and reduce fees. Transaction fees come in at around $0.20, making them much cheaper when compared to those of its rival. But they will increase once more people start using the currency.

Hacker Noon

When it comes to speed and price for Bitcoin vs Bitcoin Cash, Bitcoin Cash has an advantage over Bitcoin. It is becoming extremely popular among users and has been increasing in value even since its introduction. But like Bitcoin, it has its share of problems. The increased block size could have a centralizing effect and reduce the attack resistance of the network. Bitcoin hasn’t been around for long, so we’ll have to wait until it sees more daily transactions to find out if that will actually happen.

So in comparing Bitcoin vs Bitcoin Cash, the truth is Bitcoin Cash is not better or worse than Bitcoin. It’s just different. The two can co-exist on the market, along with many other cryptocurrencies including Ripple and Ethereum, to name a few. But the important thing to remember is that despite having similar names, they are two entirely separate currencies.