Bitcoin VS Bitcoin Cash: What Is The Difference

Bitcoin (BTC) appeared in 2009 and became the world's first cryptocurrency that was actively supported by the global community. In August 2017, the Bitcoin blockchain split into two separate ones, and, as a result, a new digital currency called Bitcoin Cash (BCH) appeared.

In this article, you will learn what is the difference between Bitcoin and Bitcoin Cash, and which cryptocurrency is better to buy.

Why Are There Two Versions of Bitcoin?

Bitcoin today is a generally accepted cryptocurrency with a capitalization of over $1.35 trillion. After a while the people’s growing interest had led to significant increase in the Bitcoin network load, which caused slower transactions and higher fees for users. It became obvious that Bitcoin would need modernization for further successful development.

There a SegWit technology was proposed as the solution to the scalability problem. It means upgrading the blockchain when some data is deleted to free up space in blocks. This technology allows to make more transactions in the same period of time. After that, it was proposed to increase the size of the blocks.

But these proposals were not enough, so later, in August 2017, the blockchain split to create the Bitcoin Cash altcoin, which allows to generate larger blocks. Now, the opportunity to conduct more transactions than before appeared.

Most of the crypto community accepted this innovation: Bitcoin Cash appeared despite the fact that some developers wanted to improve the initial BTC but the rest were against it. Many disagreements have occurred within the community, but now Bitcoin vs Bitcoin Cash coexist with each other.

What Is Bitcoin Cash?

Bitcoin Cash (BCH) is a hard fork that was created on the Bitcoin’s basis. A lot of changes have been made to the BCH cryptocurrency code for doing this.

Now, Bitcoin Cash is a cryptocurrency that is much cheaper than Bitcoin: the current exchange rate of the BCH is $ 680.51, while the BTC’s is $ 71,609. It also accelerates the transaction time because larger block sizes let you make more transactions at the same time. That is why Bitcoin Cash is in high demand among users, and it is easy to buy it.

You can purchase BCH through direct transfer or using exchange platforms. This can be done on platforms such as Paxful, Binance and Cryptomus P2P exchange. By the way, buying Bitcoin Cash on Cryptomus can be done with a minimum fee of only 0.1%.

What's The Difference Between Bitcoin And Bitcoin Cash?

Though Bitcoin and Bitcoin Cash networks have a common code base, they are two separate types of digital assets. The differences between Bitcoin and Bitcoin Cash lie in their capabilities and values, such as scalability, smart contracts, profitability and transaction costs. Let's look at each feature in more detail.

Block size and scalability

The main difference between Bitcoin and Bitcoin Cash is the block size, which was one of the reasons for the BCH’s creation. Bitcoin adherents wanted to keep the block size small for reducing the number of resources the platform can work with at the same time.

In turn, the Bitcoin Cash team decided to make the block size larger. BCH vs BTC have a huge difference here: the maximum size of BCH blocks is 32 MB, and BTC’s value is 1 MB. Bitcoin Cash has greater scalability, giving currency the ability to make more transactions per second. Nevertheless, such changes caused the necessity to switch to better technical support for the possibility of launching nodes.

Smart contracts

Today smart contract technology has become an essential part of the cryptocurrency field. Technologies have been introduced for the two cryptocurrencies too. In this case, Bitcoin and Bitcoin Cash difference stands out here. For example, Bitcoin-based smart contracts contain the ability to redirect funds in the wallet to heirs, multiple signatures, unlock funds by a third party and freeze funds in the wallet.

Bitcoin Cash allows to use smart contracts of any type. The developers have created two algorithms to improve smart contracts for BCH: CashScript and Wormhole. In the first case, you can write functions and compile them into code to add information to the block. In the second case, the algorithm allows you to create your own tokens based on the BCH blockchain.

Profitability

BCH is a well-developed branch of the original BTC blockchain, and its cost will always be lower than Bitcoin’s. Although the launch of the Bitcoin Cash project was very successful and had a high price, this position could not be maintained. After the market situation stabilized, everything fell into place and the value of Bitcoin Cash decreased again and could not catch up with half the value of BTC.

Now the price of Bitcoin exceeds the price of the Bitcoin Cash by about 105 times, and of course, it has a greater influence on the market also due to its history. Therefore, the analysis between BTC vs BCH claims that profitability from Bitcoin will always be higher than from its related altcoin.

Transaction costs and fees

The Bitcoin network has quite high transaction fees, although it tries to solve this problem. For example, a critical Bitcoin transaction fee was observed in December 2017, when the increasing of the maximum value of the token led to the commission at $ 40. At the same time, the maximum figure for child projects does not exceed $ 0.04.

In terms of speed BTC is also inferior to the BCH, which manages to process more transactions for a smaller cost. At the same time, the developers of the original code also introduced a second-level Lightning Network add-on, which is additionally able to reduce the cost of transactions..

BTC vs. BCH: Which Should You Buy?

To choose a repository for long-term investment between Bitcoin or Bitcoin Cash, you need to weigh all the pros and cons that matter to you. To do this, you need to look at the nuances of buying both cryptocurrencies:

• Features of Bitcoin. Advantages of investing in Bitcoin are relative stability over 15 years of existence and ability to avoid inflation. Also many rich companies trust it and invest in it. However, it’s crucial to remember that it also has high volatility, which is almost impossible to predict;

• Features of Bitcoin Cash. In the case of crypto analytics Bitcoin Cash wins. For predicting the market situation you can rely on graphs and tables of Bitcoin because these two crypto have a lot in common — for example, a code. BCH is also a simple and effective token with lower fees and fast transactions, and it is more pleasant to buy this cryptocurrency due to its affordable cost. Unfortunately, not all crypto wallets and exchangers support it. Moreover, it is not as much in demand in the market as Bitcoin, so it is more difficult to sell.

So, which currency is better — Bitcoin or Bitcoin Cash? With all the pros and cons, Bitcoin is better than Bitcoin Cash as a more reliable repository for long-term investment, because no one hasn’t been able to move it from the leaderboard yet. That is why Bitcoin is considered a perfect cryptocurrency for trading and mining, which does not exclude risks. In comparison with it, Bitcoin Cash can collapse at any moment and become an altcoin with little real value. So, if you want stability and more profitability you should buy Bitcoin.

Whatever cryptocurrency you choose, it’s important to think about safety. You can make the transactions on a reliable сrypto exchange like Cryptomus — the platform will help you keep your personal data and wallet safe.

Hopefully, this article helped you understand what is the difference between Bitcoin and Bitcoin Cash, and now you have a better idea of which cryptocurrency is better to invest your funds in.