Bitcoin Cash (BCH) price

What is Bitcoin Cash?

BitcoinCash is a crypto or digital currency that came into existence on August 1st 2017. What’s interesting about Bitcoin Cash is the way it came into existence. Bitcoin Cash came about through a “hard fork” of the Bitcoin network. Bitcoin is governed by a set of rules and everybody using the Bitcoin protocol must agree to those rules. This is called Consensus. If anyone doesn’t agree with the rules governing Bitcoin, the consensus can be broken resulting in a “hard fork”. What this means is that a new chain or ‘coin’ is created. Imagine a chain that simple splits into 2. Up to the point of the split they share the same history, after the disagreement they go their separate ways.  This is precisely what happened in the case of Bitcoin Cash. On August 1st of 2017, Bitcoin Cash implemented new rules for the network and the moment they started following these new rules, they split from Bitcoin and became something different. 

Do I already have Bitcoin Cash and how do I get more?

If you already owned any Bitcoin on August 1st, a digital snapshot of your account balance was taken, and the exact number of Bitcoin Cash was credited to your account. For example, if you had 10 Bitcoin in your wallet or exchange account, after the split in the network, you would be credited with 10 Bitcoin Cash tokens, keeping intact the 10 Bitcoins you already owned.

Like most cryptocurrencies, Bitcoin Cash can be purchased using fiat currencies like the US Dollar, Yen, Euro, etc. or traded for by exchanging any other digital currency. 

How to Mine Bitcoin Cash?

Bitcoin Cash like Bitcoin is also mineable. What this means is that Bitcoin Cash can only be created if users dedicate their computing power to solve a cryptographic puzzle. As more and more users join this movement, the difficulty of these cryptographic puzzles adjusts itself, increasing as more computing power is dedicated by miners as a whole to solving these puzzles. One of the best ways to mine Bitcoin Cash is to join a mining pool. A mining pool is a collection of miners that share their computing resources to solve these cryptographic puzzles with the reward being divided evenly amongst everyone involved.  Historically,  ViaBtc is the biggest mining pool for Bitcoin Cash. 

Once Bitcoin Cash is acquired, it needs to be kept safe, using a Bitcoin Cash wallet. There are lots of Bitcoin Cash wallets available for download and they can be found on the Bitcoin Cash official website. 

Price Volatility of Bitcoin Cash

Bitcoin Cash has seen large price volatility since its inception.  Throughout the end of 2017 BTC rose from  $200 to $3000. The Bitcoin Cash price chart has been quite the rollercoaster and despite its large market capitalization of over $26 billion (2017), the Bitcoin Cash forecast looks turbulent.

Bitcoin Cash was created with the goal of replacing Bitcoin, its fast transaction times and ability to deal with large transaction volumes makes it a promising piece of technology. What Bitcoin Cash desperately needs is mass adoption, the support of the mining community and users to start transacting on its network. After all, Bitcoin Cash was created to replace cash and this is no easy task. It requires the acceptance of merchants and users alike, along with a lot of marketing to get its message out there. It’s in a battle with an already established Bitcoin that’s been around for almost 10 years. In the short term, until we see signs of adoption by users and merchants, it is likely that Bitcoin Cash will remain as a currency used by speculators to place bets on keeping its price volatile. In the long term, however, in a world where digital cash does replace the current monetary system, Bitcoin Cash has established itself as a strong contender.