Bitcoin Cash(BCC) may be here to stay, but only as another alt-coin and not the main Bitcoin network. You should get used to this fact, it would save you time, money and headaches.
The creation of Bitcoin Cash
On August 1, 2017 Bitcoin underwent a User Activated Soft Fork(UASF) to implement Segregated Witness(SegWit) protocol on the Bitcoin network. SegWit was supported by both SegWit 2x and the BIP 148 community.
SegWit activation on Bitcoin would see the removal of several needless boasted features of Bitcoin which slowed down the network. The proposal was supported by nearly all the major Bitcoin miners, exchanges and companies excerpt a few.
However a few days to the activation of SegWit on August 1, a new proposal under the Bitcoin Adjustable Block Cap(Bitcoin ABC) community announced that they did not support SegWit. The Bitcoin ABC group at The Future of Bitcoin conference in Netherlands proposed for Bitcoin Cash which would be a User Activated Hard Fork(USHF) act as a back up in the event that SegWit User Activated Soft Fork did not live up to its promises.
BitMain had been campaigning for such a contingency plan sine April hence took interest in the Bitcoin Cash proposal and began to promote it to until it reached the ears of Via BTC which was thousand of miles away in China.
Sensing the opportunity to create a new Bitcoin fork which was both faster and more robust than Bitcoin as well as retained all the blocks of the main network, Via BTC swallowed the hock, line and sinker.
Within hours they had put up a future trading pair for Bitcoin Cash; on the fateful day of August 1 it was discovered that their mining pools had been used to mine the first Bitcoin Cash blocks. Via BTC then did did something which made Bitcoin Cash an official fork; they listed it on their exchange; great.
People went mad, they had heard that Bitcoin Cash was faster than Bitcoin, had the full copy of Bitcoin blocks making it somewhat legitimate and what's more - for every Bitcoin that existed there was its Bitcoin Cash clone to be claimed for free!
People love free money. All those who felt they had missed the Bitcoin gold rush flocked in their numbers to claim their free Bitcoin Cash. Investors began to buy into Bitcoin Cash hoping it would explode in price once the dust settled.
One would have expected the creators of Bitcoin Cash to come out boldly to claim the glory; they did just the opposite and began to play hide and seek. They all wanted to deny any direct involvement in the creation of Bitcoin Cash so it would look it some other faceless Satoshi had created Bitcoin Cash.
BitMain denied being the originators of the Bitcoin Cash idea just as Via BTC promptly denied directly Bitcoin Cash. BitMain was like; "Oh, we heard of that idea from some guys at the conference of The Future of Bitcoin and we did not cause Via BTC to mine it".
"We are simple a mining pool and it was a third party who used our pools to min Bitcoin Cash...BitMain's share in our holdings is too insignificant for them to influence our decisions" - that was Via BTC.
The creators of Bitcoin Cash though the more mysterious their identity less prejudice and bias their creation would suffer. After all they did not want to deal with any possible legal battles or revenge hacking exploits. Whatever.
Bitcoin Cash was born.
What is "special" about Bitcoin Cash?
This is a multi million dollar question however we will try to be precise in our answer. Here are the main features of Bitcoin Cash that set it apart from the core Bitcoin network:
- We know who created Bitcoin Cash: Bitcoin ABC with the support of BitMain and Via BTC
- Bitcoin Cash has all the full copies of the Bitcoin blockchain upto the fork on August 1
- Bitcoin Cash uses an adjustable block size cap of upto 8bm and miners are free to set their own block caps
- Every single Bitcoin in existence has its Bitcoin Cash clone which can be claimed for free
- Bitcoin Cash is faster than Bitcoin due to its larger and adjustable block size cap
- Bitcoin Cash is an alt-coin and not an original coin like Ether, Steem or Dash
- Bitcoin Cash is configured to exist side by side with the core Bitcoin network without interference
- Bitcoin Cash is also configured to be able to still run even with just a few miner support
- Bitcoin Cash does not support Segregated Witness(SegWit)
- Bitcoin Cash is not the only Bitcoin Adjustable Block Cap(Bitcoin ABC) proposal, however it is the only one that got enough support to be implemented
Should I claim my Bitcoin Cash?
While we would advise all Bitcoin enthusiast against using Bitcoin Cash, the decision is upto the users themselves. If you have a substantial amount of Bitcoin Cash or do believe in Bitcoin Cash surely you would use it.
However if you are an investor who wants to invest into Bitcoins or even an old Bitcoin user who wants to move to Bitcoin Cash, you should probably stick the real Bitcoin network and not Bitcoin Cash.
As we speak, the only advantage Bitcoin Cash has over Bitcoin is its huge block size of 8mb and the flexibility of the block size which allows miners to determine their own block size. The result is that Bitcoin Cash is faster than Bitcoin but only for the moment.
With SegWit2x's proposed block size increment hardfork in November approaching as well as other proposed future upgrades of Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash would soon be left in the dust as another alt-coin with little developers, a few exchanges and miners.
Bitcoin Cash is not the first fork of Bitcoin and probably would not be the last, however forks simply end up as time and resource wasting alt coins. Bitcoin Cash could suffer this same fate.
Disclaimer:
@BlockRush is neither an expert nor legal adviser in cryptocurrency, financial technology or the Blockchain industry; this post is only for informational purposes.
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