Bitcoin Cash (BCH): The Big Block Fork Brother of Bitcoin
Bitcoin Cash (BCH) is a cryptocurrency that hard forked from Bitcoin (BTC) in August 2017, considered one of the earliest and most famous forks of Bitcoin. At that time, the Bitcoin community was in a heated debate: some believed the Bitcoin block was too small (1MB), resulting in slow transactions and high fees, which limited its everyday use.
Another faction insisted that smaller blocks were more decentralized, leading to the larger-block supporters directly forking off to create BCH, increasing the block size to 8MB (which later upgraded to 32MB), aiming to truly make it a peer-to-peer electronic cash. BCH inherits Bitcoin's UTXO model and mining mechanism (SHA-256), but transaction speeds are significantly faster, and fees are reduced to just a few cents per transaction.
During the bull market of 2017-2018, BCH was highly regarded by many, with prices soaring above $4000 and its market capitalization briefly ranking in the top five. However, due to internal conflicts within the community (such as the split into BCH ABC and BCH SV in 2018), combined with Bitcoin's stronger brand effect, BCH gradually became marginalized.
BCH fans mainly value its practicality: larger blocks can handle more transactions, making it suitable for everyday payments, cross-border remittances, and even small tips. People in some countries (like Venezuela and Nigeria) also use it to hedge against inflation or for transfers. By 2025, BCH's market capitalization stabilizes between $5 billion to $10 billion, with prices fluctuating generally between $300 to $500, making it relatively stable among older cryptocurrencies.
The drawbacks are also quite evident: the developer community is much smaller than Bitcoin's, ecological development is slow, and new features like DeFi and NFTs have basically not kept pace. Many feel it is neither as hardcore as Bitcoin nor as flashy as Ethereum, falling somewhat in between. Bitcoin Cash represents the idealistic fork of Bitcoin, aiming to transform Bitcoin into real everyday cash rather than just digital gold.
If you find Bitcoin too expensive and slow, and you don't want to deal with those complicated new public chains, BCH is still a simple, cheap, and reliable choice.
$BCH
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