What is Bitcoin Cash?

Bitcoin Cash is a proof-of-work cryptocurrency that forked from Bitcoin on August 1, 2017 as a direct resolution to the block size debate — the multi-year dispute over whether to scale Bitcoin by increasing the block size limit or by adding a second-layer protocol. BCH immediately raised the block limit from 1 MB to 8 MB (later increased to 32 MB), prioritizing low on-chain fees and peer-to-peer payments over settlement-layer minimalism. BCH shares Bitcoin's entire transaction history up to block 478,558 and the same SHA-256 proof-of-work, but the two chains have been technically and economically separate since the fork.

Bitcoin Cash's design philosophy prioritizes global peer-to-peer cash over digital gold. Its larger blocks allow more transactions per block, keeping median fees consistently below one cent even during high-activity periods. BCH deliberately did not adopt Segregated Witness — the upgrade its larger-block proponents rejected during the scaling debate — and instead has its own CashAddr address format (using the bitcoincash: prefix), and activated a smart contract scripting extension called CashTokens in 2023 that allows fungible and non-fungible token creation directly on the base layer without a separate VM. This is a structural contrast with Bitcoin, which has kept base-layer scripting minimal and pushed functionality to Lightning.

Bitcoin Cash has experienced its own contentious splits. In November 2018, a dispute between developer factions led by Roger Ver and Craig Wright resulted in a further fork producing Bitcoin SV (BSV). In November 2020, a proposed Infrastructure Funding Plan that would have diverted 8% of block rewards to a developer fund was rejected by a significant mining faction, resulting in another fork producing Bitcoin Cash ABC (BCHA, now eCash). Each split diluted the BCH community and miner base. The core criticism remains that larger blocks do not solve scalability at global internet scale — at 32 MB per block and 10-minute intervals, the full node requirements grow faster than consumer hardware can keep up with, threatening decentralization over time.

Reviewed by the 2Bitcoins Editorial Team · Updated June 2026. Not financial advice.