A second version of Bitcoin (Bitcoin Cash) .
Bitcoin Cash was announced as a project on July 22, a response to a controversial industry compromise settled on a week earlier. That compromise was aimed at resolving a two-year-old impasse over a technical issue: how to best expand network capacity.
What’s special about Bitcoin Cash?
If you know anything about cryptocurrencies you know there are a ton of them. Some are legitimate and substantially different (arguably better) than bitcoin, and some are pretty much just copycats trying to make a quick buck.
Bitcoin cash is just another modified cryptocurrency.
But it’s getting more attention right now for a few reasons:
First, it was created as a result of forking bitcoin core, and not created from scratch. But this isn’t new — other cryptocurrencies have also forked from bitcoin in the past, and are nowhere near as valuable as bitcoin cash currently is. That being said, it does mean that anyone who held bitcoin before yesterday now potentially has access to an equal amount of bitcoin cash, which is giving it a lot of attention, as people are saying it’s “free money.”
Secondly, it’s getting attention because the hard fork was timed to coincide with bitcoin core activating a change in its code called BIP 148, which was a highly publicized event in itself. This Bitcoin Improvement Proposal was the result of months of negotiation among major players and activated Segregated Witness, something that will help bitcoin core scale going forward.