Bitcoin Cash (BCH) price, chart and history
Bitcoin Cash is $309.77, down 1.47% in the last 24 hours. Market value $6.22 billion, rank #24.
About Bitcoin Cash
Bitcoin Cash (BCH) is a digital currency that split off from Bitcoin in 2017 with the goal of being cheap, fast everyday cash. It works much like Bitcoin, with the same 21 million coin limit and mining-based security, but allows far bigger blocks of transactions, so fees usually stay at a fraction of a cent. People use it for payments, tipping and transfers, and since 2023 it can also carry custom tokens and simple app logic.
Bitcoin Cash came out of a long fight over how Bitcoin should grow. One camp wanted to raise Bitcoin's 1 MB block limit; the other favoured the SegWit upgrade and extra layers built on top. On August 1, 2017, the big-block camp, backed by mining hardware maker Bitmain and promoted by early investor Roger Ver, forked the chain, so anyone holding bitcoin at that moment received the same amount of BCH. It has no single company in charge; several volunteer developer teams maintain its software.
BCH is secured by proof-of-work mining using the same SHA-256 method as Bitcoin, and blocks can hold up to 32 MB. Because it shares miners with the far larger Bitcoin network, a small slice of Bitcoin's computing power could in theory overwhelm it. Its community has also split more than once, creating rival coins Bitcoin SV in 2018 and eCash in 2020, which caused confusion and lost trust. Critics add that everyday payment use has stayed modest despite low fees.
- Created by
- Big-block Bitcoin developers and miners (Bitcoin ABC team, backed by Bitmain)
- Launched
- August 1, 2017
- How it's secured
- Proof of work (SHA-256 mining, like Bitcoin)
- Supply
- Capped at 21 million BCH
- Block size
- Up to 32 MB (Bitcoin: about 1 MB base)