Bitcoin Cash (BCH) is a peer-to-peer electronic cash system. It’s a permissionless, decentralized cryptocurrency that requires no trusted third parties and no central bank. It was created in 2017 after the Bitcoin community split in two (or hard-forked) over scalability issues. The plan for a Bitcoin alternative was pushed through by Bitcoin activists, investors, entrepreneurs, developers, and largely China-based miners. It was considered to be one of the most successful hard-forks of the original Bitcoin. At the time of the fork, anyone owning Bitcoin was also given the same number of Bitcoin Cash units.

Bitcoin Cash increases the size of blocks, allowing for more transactions to be processed. Because the blocks are larger and contain more information, more computational power is needed to process (or mine) them.

The larger block sizes remove the need for Segregated Witness (SegWit), a code adjustment used by Bitcoin to free up block space by removing certain parts of the transaction. One issue the community had with SegWit was that it forced transactions to happen off-chain, breaking the economic incentives to make Bitcoin work. By using larger blocks and speeding up transaction process time it is hoped that Bitcoin Cash will remain on-chain and still be able to compete with the number of transactions established by financial platforms like Visa or Paypal.

The Bitcoin Cash protocol ensures there will never be more than 21 million coins in existence. The platform states that no transaction is too big or too small and that their network is on 24-hours a day, 365 days a year.

By the end of 2018, Bitcoin Cash boasted sub-cent transaction fees, it was accepted at around 670 physical locations around the world, which (it claimed) made it the most secure and widely used digital currency on the planet.