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What is Bitcoin Cash (BCH)?
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What is Bitcoin Cash (BCH)?

The 2017 Bitcoin fork that chose bigger blocks for faster payments

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August 1, 2017: The 8 MB Split

Bitcoin Cash forked from Bitcoin at block height disputes that came to a head on August 1, 2017. Holders of BTC received matching BCH balances on the new chain (wallet support varied—exchanges delayed crediting). The immediate parameter change everyone noticed: base block weight jumped from the 1 MB legacy-style ceiling toward an 8 MB class of blocks on BCH—later client releases raised effective ceilings further.

2017 fee spikes on Bitcoin hit $50+ during mempool congestion; small-value transfers stopped making sense. Big-blockers wanted capacity on layer one; small-blockers bet on SegWit plus Lightning. Both sides had numbers; neither side conceded.

2017 fork: block capacity snapshot (conceptual) Bitcoin (BTC) SegWit live 8/2017 ~1 MB base legacy cap era Throughput ~3–7 TPS (debated) Fees spiked in backlog Bitcoin Cash (BCH) Fork 2017-08-01 8 MB class blocks (initial) Later clients → 32 MB max class Room for more txs/block
BCH raised on-chain block space at the fork; BTC pursued SegWit and off-chain scaling.

On-Chain Capacity vs Lightning

BTC routing liquidity via Lightning works for many use cases; it also adds channel management UX. BCH pushes fees down by keeping base-layer space abundant—node operators pay disk and bandwidth. The trade-off is operational cost for full nodes versus user friction for layer-two onboarding.

Neither path "won" in market cap terms; both chains still produce blocks every ~10 minutes on their respective difficulty rules.

Scaling philosophies after the fork BTC roadmap Constrained base block space Lightning · channels Security budget from fee market + halving Ordinals/brc-20 stress tests 2023+ BCH roadmap Larger base blocks Low-fee retail txs on-chain 0-conf merchant practices (risk-aware) CashTokens upgrade 2023
BTC stacked L2; BCH widened L1—same whitepaper citation war, different engineering bets.

Fees, 0-Conf, and CashTokens

Typical BCH fees stayed sub-$0.01 for years while BTC mainchain fees breathed with mempool demand. Merchants sometimes accept 0-conf for small purchases—risking double-spends against speed—something BTC retailers rarely do for in-person coffee.

CashTokens (May 2023 mainnet) brought fungible and NFT primitives natively—BCH DeFi is thinner than Ethereum's but no longer pure P2PKH only.

Electronic Cash vs Digital Gold

The whitepaper title still gets quoted in both directions. BCH communities emphasize spendability; BTC communities emphasize settlement security and ossification. Market price crowned BTC; BCH retained a persistent niche in payment processor stats.

Hashrate and Merchant Stats

BCH shares SHA-256 miners with BTC—profitability switches by the hour. Node counts favor BTC; BitPay's quarterly charts still show BCH payment share measurable but minority.

Honest reporting: BCH did not flip Bitcoin. It did keep low-fee UTXO transfers alive for people who valued that niche.

Check sources: Payment share percentages vary by processor and region—pull BitPay or nationwide survey data for the quarter you care about, not forum screenshots.

Trading BCH

BCH liquidity is thinner than BTC but still lists everywhere majors trade. GaiaEx offers non-custodial spot if you want on-chain settlement without depositing to another corporate balance sheet.

  • Correlation to BTC is high; idiosyncratic moves follow upgrade debates or hash wars (mostly history).
  • Confirm fork snapshot rules if you chase airdrops—2017 tax and custody records bite late.