How to Claim Your Bitcoin Cash and Sell it for Bitcoin …

Posted on August 2, 2018 by Danzig

Warning: this guide reveals the exact method the author used to claim free Bitcoin CasH and exchange it for Bitcoin on the 2nd of August. While every reasonable effort has been made to ensure complete and accurate information, the author cant guarantee a successful outcome for those following this method.

Waiting for better documented methods and more familiar exchanges to offer BCH deposits is the safer play in this situation. However, as more people figure out how to sell their coins, profitability may well decrease.

Bitcoin Cash (aka Bcash, BCH or BCC) forked off from Bitcoin on the 1st of August and its launch has proven rather rocky. Three days later, only 2 exchanges are supporting Bcash deposits and its price has crashed on both.

It still takes relatively a lot of time to get Bcash transactions into the blockchain and thats due to the high difficulty of mining.Bcash forked with the same mining difficulty as Bitcoin but only a small fraction (around 5%) of its hashrate. Bcashs first (or genesis block) took around 7 hours to be found.

The difficulty adjustment process was meant to compensate for this, reducing difficulty to a level more appropriate for Bcashs low hashrate within a few blocks.However, miners from Genesis Block, an aptly named, high-tech hostel in Hong Kong, apparently began mining Bcash for fun and marketing purposes.

The hostels additional, unexpected hashpower greatly delayed Bcashs difficulty adjustment process. As a result, Bcash blocks remain slow, although difficulty has since adjusted to about of Bitcoins. You can use this Bitcoin Cash block explorer to see the status of the current blocks (take a look at the bottom).

If you held any bitcoin in a personal wallet (or on certain exchange wallets listed here) then congrats, you own an equal amount of Bcash too!

If you wish to sell your Bcash, there are 2 things you need to do, in the following order:

If your BTC was held on one of the exchanges listed, the exchange will have taken care of this process for you. When you log in, you should see a BCH (or possibly, BCC) balance in a new exchange wallet, in addition to your regular BTC wallet. The amounts in both wallets should match, assuming you havent made any recent trades or transactions.

If your bitcoins were held in a personal wallet, youll have to split them yourself. We cover splitting forLedger,TREZOR and for the Electrum software wallet. Note that the general procedure used for Electrum is applicable to other software wallets, although the precise steps will vary.

For those whose bitcoins were held on an exchange which split BCH from BTC and offers a market in BCH trading, youre already done sell your BCH whenever you feel like it.

Everyone else will have to decide between the three exchanges currently accepting BCH deposits; HitBTC,ViaBTCand Bittrex. I used HitBTC for two good reasons:

Keep in mind that because HitBTC is one of the only exchanges allowing to actually deposit BCH many people are selling it on the platform which causes the exchange rate to be lower than on other platforms.

Claiming Bitcoin Cash in Ledger Nano S

Claiming Bitcoin Cash in TREZOR

Claiming Bitcoin Cash in Electrum

Claiming Bitcoin Cash in ExodusClaiming Bitcoin Cash in Blochchain.info and other wallets

Selling BTC for BCC

Splitting with ledger is a fairly simple process but not an intuitive one, make sure to follow these exact steps:

Throughout the process you will need to update your firmware, this will wipe all of the data from your device. Make sure to have a back up before moving forward or you will lose all of your coins.

Download the Ledger Manager for chrome, go to Firmwares on the left hand side and click on Install. You will then be prompted to confirm this action on your device. Once the update is complete you will need to import your wallet from your seed phrase. The complete steps to this process can be found here.

Once you have a firmware version that is 1.3.1 and above, you can move on to step 3.

Inside the Ledger Manager, go to application and download the Bitcoin Cash app (2nd from the top).

If you had Bitcoins before the fork, Ledger now splits those Bitcoins into BTC and BCH but keeps them on the same wallet. Its recommended to use a separate (aka split) wallet to manage your BCH. This step isnt mandatory but is advised. If you wish to skip this step move straight to step 6.

Connect your ledger and select Bitcoin Cash from the available options on the device. The following screen will open:

Select Bitcoin Cash. The following screen will ask if you want to access the main wallet (BTC and BCH combined) or the split wallet (Only BCH). Select split.

Go to receive and generate a BCH address. You will later send your Main wallets BCH to this address. Once you have your BCH address move to step 5.

Go to settings Blockchains and this time choose Bitcoin Cash and Main.

This wallet holds your newly formed BCH along with your BTC. Its now time to send them to your split wallet.

Go to send and send your BCH to your split wallet address which youve retrieved on step 4.

You can now go to Settings Blockchains and log back into your split wallet. You will need to wait for a new BCH block to be mined until you can see that your transaction is confirmed. Once its confirmed you can send your BCH into an exchange or hold on to them.For the official ledger guide click here.

Due to only having a week to prepare for the launch of the final version of Bcash code, Trezors wallet does not currently support BCH (although theyre working on a fix). It is however possible to use an online tool by TREZOR in order to split your BCH and simultaneously send it to a BCH address.

Thoroughly review Trezors guide to this processand check their Twitter and subreddit for any updates. Sometimes the tool is offline and recently some bugs were found in it.

Step 1 Visit the beta version of Trezor wallet. You should use Google Chrome to access the wallet; the author was unable to complete the process using Firefox or a clean install thereof.

Make sure that youre on the beta site: https://beta-wallet.trezor.io

The reason for visiting the beta Trezor wallet is that it enables you to update your Trezors firmware to the latest, beta version (1.5.1). Particularly if you havent performed this process before, you should study Trezors guide to firmware updates.

Step 2 Be certain you have a backup of your seed phrase and update your firmware. This is done as follows:

Step 3 Go to the Coin Splitting Tool. Click on Connect with TREZOR. Reconnect your device and enter the PIN as usual.

Step 4 Select the account you want to split BCH from and enter an address to send the BCH to. It is possible to enter the exchange funding address directly in this stage (see below how to get a deposit address for HitBTC).

If you have an Electrum Bitcoin wallet, we suggest you follow this excellent guide put together by the Electrum developers. In case that any of this doesnt make complete sense to you, please dont use this method its pretty risky.

Heres a TL;DR version of it:

Step 1 Write down all of your Bitcoin addresses that had Bitcoins in them during the fork.

Step 2 Go to Wallet Private Keys Export and write down only the keys that are related to the addresses youve found in step 1.

Step 3 Move all of your Bitcoins to a new Electrum wallet (create a new wallet throughfile new/restore). Youre doing this so that if any of the private keys you exported are compromised in some way, your Bitcoins will be in a new address with a different private key.

Step 4 ON A DIFFERENT COMPUTER install the Electron Cash wallet. Heres the reason why it needs to be on a different machine:

Step 5 Import your private keys into Electron Cash. Once done you can use your new coins via that wallet.

The following process was supplied by one of our users and not tested by us. Use it with caution. In any case of uncertainly please contact Exodus support (they are VERY helpful and fast to respond):

Step 1 download the latest version of the Exodus desktop wallet from the Exodus website.Step 2 Create your account on Hitbtc as already stated in the article and get your BCC address.Step 3 Install the Exodus wallet and click on Help menu on the left panel. Scroll down to the menu items on the right and click on the menu called How do I claim my bitcoin cash (BCH).Step 4 Keep your BCC address (that you got from Hitbtc) handy and follow the instructions. It will calculate the amount of BTC that was in the Exodus wallet before 1st August 2017 and ask you the BCC address where you want to transfer the BCC.Step 5 Enter the BCC address and transfer. It might take 2-4hrs for the transfer to take place.To convert the BCC to BTC and transfer it back to your Exodus wallet and continue following this article.

Here is the original article from Exodus.

Update: around October 2017 Blockchain.info will add Bitcoin Cash support and you will automatically be able to see your Bitcoin Cash balance. More info can be found here.

On old Blockchain.info wallets Login and then go to Settings > Addresses on the left.

Then find your address that has your BTC balance (which held BTC at the time of the 8/1 fork) and click on More Options, then Private Keys. After that just follow the same sequence as in the Electrum guide.

In the new version of Blockchain.info you should go to security wallet recovery phrase and write down your 12 word seed.After that just follow the same sequence as in the Electrum guide.

Heres a guide for getting your BCC from Mycelium.

Heres a great video about Getting you BCH from software wallets:

The order of sequence laid out in the Electrum guide will be safe for any software wallet, as far as we know. The major point to keep in mind is that you must generate a new wallet (not just a new address), send your bitcoins to the new wallet, and only then is it safe to export the private key of your old wallet into your Bcash wallet. If youre unsure how to accomplish any of these steps, its best to wait for a detailed guide for your specific wallet.

HitBTC is a European exchange (apparently headquartered in Hong Kong) which has been operational since 2013. They dont seem to have experienced any major hacks or other negative events in that time, which is good going by crypto exchange standards.

Here are the steps for exchange BCH on HitBTC

Step 1 sign up for an account

Step 2 Sign in and navigate to your Bcash wallet by selecting the Account.

scroll down to BCC in the list of coins and click the Fund button (circle with +). Your BCC deposit address will now be generated and displayed.Note that BCC addresses look just like Bitcoin address, so be very careful that you dont confuse the two!

Step 3 Send the BCC from your wallet into your HitBTC BCC account.

Step 4 Wait for at least 2 blocks to be mined on the Bcash network.

Step 5 Move your coins into your trading account. Click the rightwards facing arrow icon, then on the expanded bar, input or verify the amount to transfer. Finally, click transfer.

Step 6 Select the Exchange tab at the top left and select the currency you wish to sell your BCH for.Make the exchange. The simplest way to sell is via a market order. This will sell as many BCH as you specify at the best available price(s).

There are other types of orders which may allow you to get a better price for your BCH. Check out Limit orders too, which allow you to place a sell order for your chosen amount of BCH into the order book at a specific price. This allows you to wait for the market to meet your price, although be aware that if your price is too high the coins may never sell. In this case, you will have to cancel your active order and place a new one at a lower price level.

Step 8 Withdraw your bitcoins, or other currency. Return to the Account tab, then transfer your BTC (or whichever currency you sold for) from your trading to your deposit / withdrawal account.

The withdraw dialog will then require your Bitcoin address. Ensure that you paste a Bitcoin address from a Bitcoin wallet under your control, not the Bcash address you used to deposit funds initially!

Congratulations, youve just increased your bitcoin holdings with almost no work! HitBTC sends out withdrawals almost immediately so you should soon be able to see your unconfirmed transaction in any block explorer.

Of course, youre not forced to sell your BCH. You may wish to hold it, perhaps because you believe in the coins long term prospects or think patience will be rewarded with a better price.

Bcash is currently trading above $300 on most exchanges, which in this authors opinion is high for an altcoin with no established economy, unknown developers, vulnerably low hashrate and no real technical innovations.

Rhetoric aside, Bcash offers no tangible advantages over Bitcoin. The codebase has been gutted of major Bitcoin protocol upgrades, such as SegWit and Replace By Fee.

Bcash addresses scaling by the relatively crude means of multiplying its maximum block size from 1 to 8 megabytes. This has the consequence of increasing operational demands across all nodes; likely increasing miner centralisation.

Each new block transmits coins onto exchanges, releasing pent-up selling pressure. Given the limited liquidity of these exchanges, the result is a steep drop as many coins are sold simultaneously. This pattern may be clearly seen in the following chart:

BCH/BTC 1 minute chart with recent blocks demarcated. Notice that price drops coincide with volume spikes.

Waiting for a block can be a tedious process. Currently, the best way to monitor Bcash blocks in real-time is via this block explorer. Bcash blocks currently take around 2 hours to find (but may take much longer).

How to Claim Your Bitcoin Cash and Sell it for Bitcoin ...

What is Bitcoin Cash? – cointelegraph.com

Posted on July 29, 2018 by Danzig

Bitcoin first appeared almost exactly nine years ago and its now as strong as ever. These days, its not only the worlds first but also the most expensive, stable and popular cryptocurrency.

That being said, it isnt perfect. One of the most pressing issues for the cryptocurrency has always been its scalability. More specifically, its been the size of a block of transactions, which upon the creation of Bitcoin was limited to one MB. This limit causes substantial delays in transaction processing times and limits the number of transactions the network can process.

Bitcoin Cash was a different story. It differs from the other versions in that in enabled the increase of the block size from one MB to eight MB. Its overall goal is to increase the number of transactions that can be processed by the network, hoping that Bitcoin Cash will be able to compete with the volume of transactions that industry giants like PayPal and Visa can currently process.

Bitcoin Cash was launched in August 2017 and has since become Bitcoins most successful offshoot.

The one MB limit for the size of every block was originally implemented to lower the possibility of potential spam and DDoS-attacks. While there were not that many transactions happening in the network, the limit wasnt affecting anything at all.

As Bitcoin grew more and more popular, the limit started causing blocks to pile up, which unnecessarily extended the transition times. The situation got out of hand around May 2017, when some users reported having to wait for confirmation for up to four days.

Users had a chance to pay higher transaction fees to speed up the confirmation, but this approach basically rendered Bitcoin useless as a payment method, especially when it came to smaller transactions. For instance, paying for a sandwich or a cup of coffee with BTC just simply wasnt viable, as a $3 cup of coffee will incur a transaction fee of more than $15. Otherwise, the seller will receive an unspendable dust amount.

The Bitcoin community came up with two possible solutions to this situation: Bitcoin Unlimited and Segregated Witness (SegWit).

Bitcoin Unlimited would scrap the block size limit altogether. Many miners were in favor of this solution, as the lack of block size limit would not only prevent blocks from piling up but also raise the overall miners fee for every block.

However, a lot of developers were against this proposal, thinking that its implementation will lead to small miners going out of business, which, in turn, could lead to a centralization of the entire network by massive mining corporations.

A Segregated Witness solution implied storing some of the information in separate files outside of the Blockchain. Developers claimed that it would free up a lot of storage space, the blocks will fit in more transactions and the confirmation time will significantly decrease. But, many people believed it was just a more complicated temporary stopgap when compared to the Bitcoin Unlimited approach.

As a result, a compromise protocol called SegWit2x was developed. Launching this protocol meant storing some of the information outside of the Blockchain as well as increasing the block size limit to two MB. The protocol was implemented on Aug. 1, 2017, after 95 percent of miners voted for the proposal. However, the network didnt see the immediate increase in the block size limit. To a lot of people, this meant postponing a problem instead of solving it.

Moreover, this decision seemed to cater for those who treat Bitcoin as an investment opportunity and not a payment system it was created to be.

Then, during the Future of Bitcoin conference in Arnhem, Netherlands, the first implementation of the Bitcoin Cash protocol called Bitcoin ABC was announced by Amaury Schet, a former engineer at Facebook.

Schet and his team of developers decided to abandon the SegWit2x protocol and increase the block size limit to eight MB. As such drastic changes required their creation to split from the original Bitcoin network, it was announced that a hard fork will take place on Aug. 1, 2017.

For those that dont know, a hard fork is the only currently known method for developers to update Bitcoin software. Developers split the network and essentially create a new Blockchain with altered rules. The original and the forked version of the cryptocurrency have identical Blockchains all the way up to the block when the split occurred. From there on, the two networks exist independently.

After the split happened, everyone who held Bitcoins before the hard fork received the same amount of Bitcoin Cash tokens.

The new cryptocurrency was quickly adopted by investors, as by the end of the first day of its existence Bitcoin Cash became the third cryptocurrency behind Bitcoin and Ethereum in terms of market capitalization.

In short: yes. The ever-rising fees associated with Bitcoin transactions were one of the main reasons for the inception of Bitcoin Cash. A very hands-on test, conducted in December 2017, showed that a Bitcoin Cash transaction was 99.56 percent cheaper than the equivalent transaction on the original Bitcoin network.

At the very end of 2017, people were paying $28 on average in transaction fees to move their Bitcoin tokens. Someone has even claimed that they had to pay a $16 fee to send $25 worth of Bitcoin, which is a 40 percent commission.

In a cryptocurrency world, a hard fork is always quite a troubling event. Many people believe that it goes against the very principle of the immutability of Blockchain and contradicts the code is law principle.

When it comes to this particular hard fork, many critics are worried that the computer power required to process larger blocks will price out smaller miners, which might lead to the decision-making power being concentrated in the hands of large corporations that can afford more and better equipment.

Finally, as everyone who held Bitcoins before the split received an equal amount of Bitcoin Cash tokens, some people voiced their concerns that the split was nothing but a money-making scheme. In fact, the hard fork did create a situation similar to a double-spending problem, as it made conducting two transactions from a single wallet using the same set of keys possible.

Roger Ver is a prominent investor and an early Bitcoin adopter. He invested over a million dollars into various emerging Bitcoin startups, including Ripple, Z.Cash, Blockchain.com, Bitpay, Purse.io and Kraken. He is also a CEO of Bitcoin.com and one of the five creators of the Bitcoin Foundation, to which he has also donated more than $1 mln worth of Bitcoin. Ver sees Bitcoin as a mean of achieving economic freedom. In the cryptocurrency community, he is also known as Bitcoin Jesus.

These days, however, Roger Ver is advocating for Bitcoin Cash. In a recent interview with Cointelegraph, Ver described Bitcoin Cash as the real Bitcoin, claiming it will have the bigger market capitalization, trade volume and user base in the near future. He has also been quoted saying that he holds the majority of his cryptocurrency funds in Bitcoin Cash, which is, perhaps, the biggest indicator of his faith in the asset.

Bitcoin Cash hasnt been around for very long, but it has already established itself as an extremely strong cryptocurrency. At the time of writing, its the worlds fourth cryptocurrency in terms of market capitalization, behind the industry stalwarts Bitcoin, Ethereum and Ripple. Its also a worlds second most valued cryptocurrency at $1,623 for one BCH as of Jan. 22, 2018.

To many people, Bitcoin Cash became an answer to everything that was wrong with the original Bitcoin, and it keeps getting new followers day by day.

Generally, every investment and trading move involves risk, you should conduct your own research when making a decision.

Bitcoin Cash is a completely independent cryptocurrency, so its price is not dependant on that of the original Bitcoin. However, it is important to note that Bitcoin is still the worlds dominant cryptocurrency, so if it goes up or down, the absolute majority of other cryptocurrencies are very likely to follow its trend.

As Bitcoin Cash is a relatively new cryptocurrency, not every major exchange supports it as of yet. Below is a table of exchanges that operate worldwide where you can trade BCH for a fiat currency or another cryptocurrency. A complete list of every exchange supporting Bitcoin Cash can be found here.

Exchange

BCH-fiat trading pairs

BCH-Crypto trading pairs

Coinbase

BCH/USD

BCH/BTC

Bittrex (BCH is known as BCC on Bittrex)

BCC/BTC, BCC/USDT, BCC/ETH

Kraken

BCH/USD, BCH/EUR

BCH/BTC

Cex.io

BCH/USD, BCH/EUR, BCH/GBP

BCH/BTC

Poloniex

BCH/BTC, BCH/USDT, BCH/ETH

Bitcoin Cash is also supported by Changelly and ShapeShift, which are services that enable users to trade between various cryptocurrencies quickly.

LocalBitcoinCash is a peer-to-peer exchange which allows users to buy and sell BTH directly, both via their escrow service or via a meetup.

Bitcoin Cash, Litecoin and Ripple Daily Analysis 20/07/18

Posted on July 29, 2018 by Danzig

Bitcoin Cash in Reverse

Bitcoin Cash slipped by 0.24% on Thursday, following Wednesdays 3.33% slide, to end the day at $822.4.

A range bound start to the day saw Bitcoin Cash pullback to an intraday low $805.5 in the early hours, holding above the first major support level at $803.6, before hitting an intraday high $845 by mid-day.

The mid-day rally left Bitcoin short of the first major resistance level at $875.1 and more importantly $900 levels and the 23.6% FIB Retracement Level of $930, with the afternoon pullback to $820 levels leaving the extended bearish trend intact.

At the time of writing, Bitcoin Cash was down 1.61% to $810.8, with a start of the day pullback to an intraday low $806.7 doing the damage early on, while managing to steer clear of the first major support level at $803.6.

For the day ahead a move through a start of the day $823.9 high to $824 levels would support a run at the first major resistance level at $843.1, while we can expect Bitcoin Cash to face plenty of resistance on attempts to break out from the first major resistance level, which would leave $900 levels out of play for the day.

Failure to move back through to the mornings high could see Bitcoin Cash pullback later in the day to test the first major support level at $803.6 before any recovery, sub-$800 support levels likely to be left untested through the day.

Get Into Bitcoin Cash Trading Today

Litecoin slipped by just 0.17% on Thursday, following Wednesdays 3.16% slide, to end the day at $86.13.

Following Tuesdays late reversal, Litecoin moved from a start of the day intraday low $85.01 to middle of the day intraday high $88.9, before easing back to $86 levels, the moves through the day leaving the major support and resistance levels untested.

In spite of the relatively range bound day, Litecoin failed to break through to $90 levels to leave the extended bearish trend intact, the 23.6% FIB Retracement Level of $98 some way off.

At the time of writing, Litecoin was down 0.95% to $85.32, with a early fall to a morning low $84.71 seeing Litecoin hold just above the first major support level a $84.46 before recovering to $85 levels, a start of the day high $86.14 sitting well below the first major resistance level at $88.35 and $90 levels, which remains the key level for Litecoin.

For the day ahead, a move through to $86.68 would support a run at the first major resistance level at $88.35, though we will expect Litecoin to continue to fall short of $90 levels through the day, with the 23.6% FIB Retracement Level of $98 needed to be reached to begin a bearish trend reversal.

Failure to move back through to $86 levels later in the day could see Litecoin pullback through to $84 levels to test the days first major support level at $84.46, with the second major support level at 82.79 in play should sentiment not improve, while we will expect Litecoin to continue to hold on to $80 levels by the days end.

Story Continues

Buy & Sell Cryptocurrency Instantly

Ripples XRP fell by 2.1% on Thursday, following Wednesdays 4.12% slide, to end the day at $0.47793.

A morning recovery from late Tuesdays sell-off saw Ripples XRP move through to an intraday high $0.49674 in the early afternoon before going into reverse through the remainder of the day, the days high falling short of $0.5 levels and well short of the first major resistance level at $0.5203.

The afternoon reversal saw Ripples XRP slide to an intraday low $0.4708 before steadying, the days low holding above the first major support level at $0.4648, with the continued failure to take a run at the 23.6% FIB Retracement Level of $0.5528 leaving the extended bearish trend intact.

At the time of writing, Ripples XRP was down 3.33% to $0.46196 in whats been a bearish start to the day, Ripples XRP falling through the first major support level at $0.4669 to a morning low $0.46016, a start of the day $0.478 falling well short of the first major resistance level at $0.4928.

For the day ahead, a move through to $0.4818 would support a run at the first major resistance level at $0.4928, while we will expect $0.50 levels and the 23.6% FIB Retracement Level of $0.5528 to remain out of reach for the day.

Failure to move back through to $0.48 levels could see Ripples XRP pullback to $0.45 levels to test the second major support level at $0.4559 before any recovery to $0.47 levels, the extended bearish trend firmly intact going into the weekend.

Buy & Sell Cryptocurrency Instantly

This article was originally posted on FX Empire

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Bitcoin Cash, Litecoin and Ripple Daily Analysis 20/07/18

Bitcoin Cash (BCC) : Everything You need to know about …

Posted on July 22, 2018 by Danzig

I am sure if you are reading this, you might know about the current Bitcoin scaling issue. This issue is not new, but it seems like it is about to reach its climax.

Multiple users, miners, and developers are clinging to multiple solutions to solve the overarching Bitcoin scaling debate. And everyone is deciding which side to join in the chaotic situation of this upcoming Bitcoin fork.

Which side are you joining?

If you dont understand what I am talking about, check out the scaling debate and the fork issue here.

So here are some technical jargons you may have seen:

These dont help normal users and do little good. In my opinion, this has only led to a lot of the present daysFUD (fear, uncertainty, and doubt) in every Bitcoinersmind who doesnt understand these jargons.

So I thought of covering the latest on this Bitcoin drama without getting deep into these technical jargons for now. (Soon, I will publish a separate guide on all these jargons related to the BTC fork)

For now, you should just know that our original dearest- Bitcoin (BTC),which Satoshi Nakamoto created, is likely going to split on August 1, 2017.

The new split of Bitcoin will be called Bitcoin Cash.

Wondering what that is?

Bitcoin Cash is a new cryptocurrency denoted, as of now, as BCH.

A group of influential miners, developers, investors, and users who are against the agreed consensus (aka BIP-91 or SegWit2x) have decided to fork the original Bitcoin blockchain and create a new version called Bitcoin Cash.

The official Bitcoin Cashswebsite defines itself as:

Bitcoin Cash is peer-to-peer electronic cash for the Internet. It is fully decentralized, with no central bank and requires no trusted third parties to operate.

The official date and time for the fork is:

Fork Date: 2017-08-01 12:20 p.m. UTC

For your information, it will be a miner activated hard fork (aka MAHF) that will happen without the agreement of a majority of miners or hash power.

Bitcoin Cash will be a fork of the original Bitcoin blockchain with some changes and additional features here and there.

Mind you, these changes might look small and insignificant, but in reality, these small things have been the reason for a massive debate on Bitcoin scaling for many years.

1. New Name With a new name to Bitcoins offspring, i.e. Bitcoin Cash, it seems to appeal to a stratum of users who believe that Bitcoin should be a cash-like thing thats easy to exchange with minimal or no fees. Suffixing Cash to Bitcoin encourages this usage.

2. Block Size Limit Increase A certain group of users, miners, and developers have always advocated for a bigger block size in BTC. Now with Bitcoin Cash, they will start off with an immediate increase of the block size limit to 8MB.

3. Replay and Wipeout ProtectionIf and when BCH splits, they have a well thought out replay and wipeout protection plan for both chains. With this, everyone involved will have minimum disruptions and both the chains can peacefully coexistence from there.

4.New Transaction TypeAs part of the replay protection technology, Bitcoin Cash has introduced a new transaction type with additional benefits such as input value signing for improved hardware wallet security, and elimination of the quadratic hashing problem. (Source-https://www.bitcoincash.org/)

Websites from where you can buy Bitcoin Cash:

You may think that no one would support this new kid in the crypto market. But thats not true!

BCH is getting enough support from users, miners, and developers. And in reality, to start with, you only need support from these key players.

Moreover, it wouldnt be fair to dismiss a currency which has not yet been born and has yet to be traded in the market.

For your information, CoinMarketCap lists the futures options of Bitcoin Cash.

Notable Supporters (Exchanges, Mining Pools, and Wallets)

Together, these four pools in total make30% of the entire hash power, which is not small. So far, there is no official confirmation that they will be giving all of their hash power to BCH mining. But if that happens, BCH is here to stay.

Bitcoin Cash Wallets

Bitcoin Cash Exchanges

As the official website of Bitcoin Cash states:

All current Bitcoin holders will automatically own Bitcoin Cash. The existing ledger at the time of the split is preserved, thus users retain any balances they had before the split.

So it means that if you hold Bitcoins, after the split/fork, you will have both BTC and BCH balances; in other words,your coin holdings will double.

Wowowow double!!

You may think this is a good thing as your value will also double.

Note: Doubling of coins does not mean doubling of value. The value of both BTC and BCHwill be determined after the split based on demand/supply in the market and on user sentiments.

You do not need to do much, but you need to be updated and agile about all of this. If you want access to your BCH coins, you will require your private keys.

And heres the important part:Both of your coins (BTC and BCH) will have the same private keys.

Moreover, due to this fork/split, another problem called Replay Attacks, can happen.

Though,intheir FAQsection, Bitcoin Cash says that they have replay protection in place, but we are not sure how effective it is as it is still not been tested in live.

How is transaction replay being handled between the new and the old blockchain?

Bitcoin Cash transactions use a new flagSIGHASH_FORKID, which is non standard to the legacy blockchain. This prevents Bitcoin Cash transactions from being replayed on the Bitcoin blockchain and vice versa.

So to avoid replay attacks and access your BCH coins, we suggest you take care of the following things:

Order Ledger Nano S | Order Trezor from the official site

Predicting or commenting on the future of Bitcoin Cash is impossible.

The only certain future prediction as of now is that if you owned any Bitcoin before the forkon 2017-08-01 12:20 p.m. UTC, then you will surely have the same amount of BTC andBCH after the fork.

For more details on how you will be able to access BCH, keep an eye on our blog.

Note: This last part of the article is for advanced users who are aware of Bitcoins fork-ology terms. For non-technical users, I will be explaining terms such as Segwit2x, UASF, UAHF, etc. in an another article. For now, I have shared with you actionable things to avoid any loss in case a fork happens. So if you wish, you may skip this part.

Continuing forward ..on how we reached here!

Some of you who are aware of some dynamics of the BTC fork might be thinking why I am talking about this fork now. Well, we heard a few days back the news that BTC isnt splitting due to BIP 91 or SegWit2x or BIP 141 or whatever.

Well, that was true, and it is still sort of true. But, there was an another proposal on how to scale Bitcoin called BIP 148 (aka UASF) which intended to activate SegWit on August 1, 2017, without seeking the majority of miners by updating their full node software.

In response, Bitmain (and others) came up with a contingency plan to save some miners and users who otherwise would have gotten wiped out in case BIP 148 was activated. They called this plan a UAHF (user-activated hard fork). That means they will be supporting and implementing BCH.

But, as BIP 91 (the first part of SegWit2x) is already locked in and on the path of activation, it means that there would be no need for Bitmans contingency plan because BIP 148 wont be activated now. On the other hand, BIP 148s original aim is already being achieved by the activation of BIP 91 (or BIP 141 or SegWit2x), so there is no point, it seems, in activating it.

However, now it appears that this plan will still be carried out on August 1, 2017 because this group is fundamentally against the idea of SegWit (or SegWit2x) and sees a block size increase as the only option.

The only ray of hope to stop this fork seems to be that Bitcoin core developers, miners, users, etc. who voted in favor of BIP 91 need to suddenlyagreeonAugust 1 to reject SegWit and accept the increasing of block size to 8 MB. And believe me, this is very unlikely.

August 1st will be a historic day in the lifetime of Bitcoin and its users. If people find BCH more profitable and appealing, it could take off, or if it turns out to not offer anything useful to the world, it could just die an unnamed death.

But no one knows

So until that time, stay tuned at CoinSutra to keep with the Bitcoin revolution!

For further reading:

Continued here:

Bitcoin Cash (BCC) : Everything You need to know about ...

What is Bitcoin Cash? BCH vs Bitcoin | CoinCentral

Posted on July 6, 2018 by Danzig

What is Bitcoin Cash?

Bitcoin Cash arose as an alternative to Bitcoin, and its currently between the third and second most valuable cryptocurrency in the world by market cap, after Bitcoin and Ethereum. The founders of Bitcoin Cash created the alternative cryptocurrency on August 1, 2017 to combat the rise in transaction wait times and fees on the original Bitcoin network. Bitcoin Cash increases the number of transactions that can be processed per block.

In this What is Bitcoin Cash guide, well go over the history of Bitcoin Cash, its current situation, and how it compares to the original Bitcoin.

Its no secret that Bitcoin has a scalability problem.

As the currency has grown in popularity, so have the number of transactions taking place on the network, and Bitcoin is currently pushing the limits of its software.

The main problem is Bitcoin imposes a hard limit on the size of a block, the place where transaction information gets stored. Currently, blocks on the Bitcoin blockchain are limited to 1 MB in size.

Transactions on Bitcoin Over Time

Why would Bitcoin limit the number of transactions the network can process?

Well, since Bitcoin uses a distributed ledger, every user on the network needs to download and keep a copy of the entire Bitcoin transaction history. Allowing unlimited transactions would mean that ledger would grow to an enormous size, and ordinary users wouldnt have the computing storage or bandwidth to use the network.

If unlimited transactions were allowed, Bitcoin would become the domain of a centralized few organizations with enough processing power to handle tens of thousands of new transactions per second.

Since Bitcoin was created to avoid centralized institutions, this isnt an attractive option.

The 1 MB limit on block size thats currently in place means that the transaction ledger doesnt grow too large too quickly. New users can easily download the transaction history and join Bitcoin. However, this block limit also means that there are more demands for transactions than there is space in the block to fit them all.

As a result, Bitcoin miners are charging fees to have your transactions prioritized and included sooner. If you decide not to pay the fees, as of November 2017, your transaction takes on average a little over 2 hours to get confirmed.

These fees and confirmation times also seem contrary to Bitcoins mission of democratizing payments. With fiat transfers, you pay fees to a bank. For Bitcoin, paying fees to miners doesnt seem much different, although the fees are variable and usually less than a bank transfer.

The founders and community of Bitcoin Cash believe that block size does need a limit, but the 1 MB limit is arbitrary. Instead, they proposed a system with a block size of 8MB, still reasonable for new users to download but large enough that the new system could accommodate many times the number of transactions per second as the original Bitcoin blockchain!

Before deciding to create a new currency, the folks behind Bitcoin Cash appealed to the original Bitcoin community for an increase in block size. Those in favor of the increase cited greater accessibility and room to grow for the burgeoning Bitcoin user base.

However, there were many opposed to the increase, including miners who would miss the fees for transactions, leading to a decrease in overall mining on the blockchain and lowered security as a result. Opponents also believed that such an increase in network capacity would still lead to storage, bandwidth, and computing requirements outside the reach of the ordinary user.

While the two camps did reach a small compromise in the form of BIP 91 and Segregated Witness, upgrades targeted at reducing the amount of information needed inside the block, the argument over increased block size dragged on for over two years.

Ultimately the two camps decided to part ways in the form of a hard fork on the Bitcoin network.

The original Bitcoin would continue to exist with its 1 MB block limit. In addition, a new Bitcoin alternative, aka Bitcoin Cash, would be created with an 8 MB block limit. A hard fork means that Bitcoin Cash kept the same transaction history as Bitcoin up until the moment of the fork. If you owned Bitcoin before the hard fork, you continued to own that Bitcoin, but you now received an equivalent amount of Bitcoin Cash tokens on the new fork.

While technically almost identical, the two networks are not interchangeable.

The new Bitcoin Cash implemented replay protection and other measures to create a hard wall between the Bitcoin Cash fork and Bitcoin, meaning transactions could only be conducted within the fork and not across networks. The two currencies share a common history up until August 1, 2017, but thereafter they are completely separate.

As a result, Bitcoin Cash has a different exchange rate than Bitcoin, and not all wallets and exchanges supported Bitcoin Cash upon its launch. Still, by the end of the day on August 1, Bitcoin Cash was the third most valuable cryptocurrency in the world, in terms of market cap, and it continues to hold that position as of November 13, 2017 (although it briefly passed Ethereum as the 2nd largest cryptocurrency by market cap).

For the beginning of its life, Bitcoin Cash largely derived its value from the speculation that it will inherit the throne as king of crypto if and when Bitcoins scalability crisis causes the currency to no longer be feasible. The most die-hard advocates of Bitcoin Cash believe it will simply become, Bitcoin, and the original Bitcoin will fade as Bitcoin Legacy.

Bitcoin Cashs detractors, on the other hand, see the project as an unnecessary split to the community, dividing an already small core group of people who love and understand blockchain technology into factions.

At the end of the day, discussions on forums and social media about the future of Bitcoin and Bitcoin Cash are less important to the projects success than the decisions miners make about the new currency.

Since Bitcoin Cash is almost identical to Bitcoin, aside from block size, the two forks would now be competing for mining power.

Miners had a choice: take a chance on a new, possibly lucrative venture with greater risk or stick with the tried and tested model on the original Bitcoin mining network.

In the beginning, Bitcoin Cash had trouble because its difficulty level was still calibrated to the mining power of the original Bitcoin network. With the sudden decrease in computing power for mining, it took up to 10 hours for Bitcoin Cash blocks to be mined early on.

However, Bitcoins (and, hence, Bitcoin Cashs) software is written to adjust the difficulty of mining every 2,016 blocks. If more miners have joined the network, the difficulty will increase so the block time remains roughly the same (~10 minutes for Bitcoin and Bitcoin Cash). If there are fewer miners on the network, the difficulty will decrease.

The problem was that Bitcoin Cash didnt have time to wait for 2,016 blocks to go by before the difficulty adjustment. Instead, they implemented an Emergency Difficulty Adjustment (EDA) that automatically changed the difficulty if the mining hashrate (hashrate is the computing power of all the mining computers on the network) is a tiny percentage of what was expected.

Over the first few weeks of Bitcoin Cash, the block difficulty dropped quickly thanks to EDA. As a result, mining Bitcoin Cash became more lucrative, and miners began to migrate from mining Bitcoin to Bitcoin Cash. Some of these miners were idealists, dedicated to the idea of Bitcoin Cashs scalability solution. Yet, others were interested in acquiring Bitcoin Cash as an investment vehicle, with prices expected to rise. Finally, for some mining Bitcoin Cash was a business opportunity, and theyd switch between mining Bitcoin and Bitcoin Cash depending on which was most profitable at the time.

After its initial launch and pump of its value, Bitcoin Cashs value stabilized around $400/BCH.

However, in recent weeks Bitcoin Cash has been on the rise, and news from November 9 about setbacks in Bitcoins scalability planning has only fueled the demand for Bitcoin Cash.

Bitcoin Cash is one answer to Bitcoins scalability problem, but the Bitcoin community was hard at work thinking of other ways to improve scalability. The first came with the implementation of Segregated Witness (SegWit), a new block structure that disassociated verification signatures from the transaction information contained in the block, reducing the space needed per transaction and increasing the transactions per block. SegWit was implemented as an optional, user driven update. This means that miners can choose whether to mine traditional or SegWit blocks. Once adoption reaches 95%, SegWit will be considered fully adopted. Currently, SegWit adoption is around 12%.

After SegWit went live, the next step in enhancing Bitcoins scalability was increasing the block size, not to 8 MB like Bitcoin Cash, but to 2 MB, effectively doubling the block size. This doubling was known as SegWit2x, and it was widely regarded as the way forward for Bitcoin, with users preparing for a hard fork to introduce the technology in November. However, a group of businesses and mining farms withdrew support for SegWit2x, essentially shuttering hopes for adoption of the scalability solution.

In the face of Bitcoins inability to establish a consensus on scalability, investors turned to Bitcoin Cash, with its price rising to over $1250/BCH in recent trading. If Bitcoin continues to struggle with its scalability issues, Bitcoin Cash is poised to take up the mantle. Investors in Bitcoin Cash believe that scenario is likely, while detractors believe Bitcoins dominance of the market will continue. Ultimately investing in and using Bitcoin Cash is about whether you believe Bitcoins scalability problems are serious and if you think Bitcoin can solve those problems.

Original post:

What is Bitcoin Cash? BCH vs Bitcoin | CoinCentral

What is Bitcoin Cash | Learn about Bitcoin Cash

Posted on June 21, 2018 by Danzig

Bitcoin Cash is a cryptocurrency, or digital money. A revolutionary invention as important as the internet. Bitcoin Cash can be used to buy/sell anything just like the USD. Bitcoin Cash is a global trusted computing network to transfer money/value.

Mining is how Bitcoin Cash (out of the possible 21 million) come into existence on a set schedule. People run specialized hardware that solves very difficult calculations that keep the network secure.

This process is required so that no one can cheat like trying to spend the same funds twice. All miners race to try to "solve" the equation so that they can win the reward, which is currently 12.5 Bitcoin Cash. There is a random winner awarded roughly every 10 minutes. All the transactions that took place in those 10 minutes get cemented into the Bitcoin Cash database, or more commonly referred to as the Blockchain.

We know this is safe because it is very very expensive to try to attack the Bitcoin network. The incentives have proven to work since 2009 and demonstrate it is more profitable to play by the rules than to try to attack the network.

It is the combination of scarcity and utility that makes crypto valuable. There will only ever be 21 million coins total and the user experience for sending cryptocurrency instantly is much better than dealing with banks. Crypto is to banking as Email is to the post office. Disruptive technologies are too important to ignore.

Finance is not taught, but it's super important to understand. Bitcoin Cash promotes savings over spending, which causes people to become a bit more disciplined and financially conscious. There are going to be many use-cases that were not possible before with old money. Owning some Bitcoin Cash acts as your ticket into this future economy. Many industries will be disrupted and long term holders are likely to see healthy gains in their wealth.

It's important to know you can own a fraction of Bitcoin Cash . They are divisible down to 8 digits and it is not a requirement to buy 1 full coin.

In the white paper, it is described as a "free open source peer-to-peer electroniccash system that is completely decentralized". This means being able to send money to anyone for cheap without a middleman being able to tell you no.

We have a permissionless way of accessing data called the internet. We needed a form of money that cannot be corrupted or controlled by bankers and politicians. By removing human manipulation from the equation, we have money that makes sense, is fair, censorship resistant, and reliable.

As it is still relatively early, the ecosystem is not as mature yet and arguably not mainstream ready.

The everyday user may still be overwhelmed or intimidated by this technology, but this continually improves over time.

Merchant adoption is increasing all the time, but there is a limited number of places to spend your crypto in retail locations at the moment.

The market value is likely to fluctuate in price very often until the ecosystem is much more mature. This may take years, but the overall trend is upwards in the long term compared to inflationary fiat currencies.

There are some people who are very threatened by Bitcoin Cash and seek to discredit it as much as possible.

Satoshi Nakamoto is the pseudonym for the creator of bitcoin. Satoshi was likely a small group of individuals who each brought something to the table in order to make Bitcoin work. The original Bitcoin reached capacity many years ago and stopped functioning as originally intended. The situation was like google saying we have served X amount of searches today, sorry you can't use google. Except instead of google, it was a small group of well funded developers who wanted bitcoin to go in a different direction than Satoshi did.

Years of debate went by and no progress was made towards fixing Bitcoin. Many people began to lose hope that things would ever get better. A lot of developer talent and startup potential moved onto altcoins instead. Transactions were backlogged and fees rose to several dollars and priced many people out of using Bitcoin. The same developer team introduced the most radical change to Bitcoin to date which would fundamentally change the code forever. In order to preserve the proven track record of the way Satoshi envisioned Bitcoin to be, Bitcoin Cash was created. You can read the longer history here.

This site contains a Bitcoin Cash Faucet which can send you a small amount of Bitcoin Cash for free. No strings attached. All you need is a wallet to start receiving cryptocurrency.

The more common methods of obtaining Bitcoin Cash involve exchanges like Shapeshift, or Kraken. An exchange is a company that provides a platform to trade one currency for cryptocurrency, or vice versa. Read more on theResources page.

Read the original post:

What is Bitcoin Cash | Learn about Bitcoin Cash

Why Bitcoin Cash Is Not Bitcoin [BTC vs. BCH – Differences …

Posted on March 24, 2018 by ev1

The crypto-sphere is heating up and simultaneously becoming more confusing as it evolves.

I am sad to see how the viruses of confusion and myth are purposely injected into the ecosystem and how the whole system is manipulated as well as hijacked on a regular basis.

Specifically, I am talking about the recent insane price spike of Bitcoin Cash and the doomed price fall of Bitcoin in just a matter of hours.

Some of you who are old players of the crypto-sphere must have benefitted from this sudden rise and fall, but I think its not good for newcomers, and its not healthyfor Bitcoin in the long term.

Thats why in this write-up I wish to convey some of my thoughts on how Bitcoin Cash is not Bitcoin. And I also want to clarify why the newcomers should not fall prey to the Bitcoin Cash PR campaign.

For the latecomers, I want to first explain what Bitcoin Cash is and show you some facts. Then, Ill explain Bitcoin and leave it to you to decide for yourself.

Bitcoin Cash is a Bitcoin fork which was created this year on the 1st of August by a minority group of influential miners, developers, investors, and users who were against the agreed consensus of SegWit implementation to scale Bitcoin.

Namely, there are three main players in the Bitcoin Cash community Roger Ver, Jihan Wu, andDeadal Nix.

They decided to fork the original Bitcoin blockchain and create a new version called Bitcoin Cash (aka BCH) with an adjustable block size up to8 MB blocks.

Some of the benefits & features of Bitcoin Cash

This on-chain increase in the ability of Bitcoin Cash provides several benefits to its users against Bitcoin, but these benefits come at a huge price that its users have to pay. (I will explain this huge price further in the article.)

Some more benefits

For more details, read our extensive guide on Bitcoin Cash:

Ignoring the fact that many of you would have made a good amount of money in the recent Bitcoin Cash rally, one needs to pay a huge cost for using Bitcoin Cash.

This cost cannot be measured in dollars, euros, or yens, but instead, it is a cost that you pay by compromising the original dream of Satoshi Nakamoto to make an uncensorablealternative monetary system which isnt controlled by an individual or a group of people.

Some of you might say that I am incorrect because Bitcoin Cashs official site claims that they are carrying forward Satoshis Vision by stating:

Some of the developers {of couse the Bitcoin Core Devs} did not understand and agree with the original vision of peer-to-peer electronic cash that Satoshi Nakamoto had created.

And

Bitcoin Cash is the continuation of the Bitcoin project as peer-to-peer digital cash.

https://www.bitcoincash.org/

But actually speaking, they are not even close to Satoshis originalvision of decentralized and uncensored money.

Bitcoin Cash is extremely censored.

Wait! Some of you might say that I am biased and I am just a Bitcoin fan, but I have facts!

1. A decentralized cryptocurrency having a CEO? Really?!?!

Do you really need a CEO for a currency? If you do, then whats the difference between a business and a crypto?

Check this out https://www.bitcoincash.org/letter-from-the-ceo.pdf

An official statement from the CEO of #Bitcoin Cash: how we resolve conflicts in our community, our values, and our development of leaders and people https://t.co/BaNupOmh2m

Rick Falkvinge (@Falkvinge) November 12, 2017

Archive of @Falkvinge "Official Statement" procaliming himself CEO of $BCH in incoherent/confusing post (now taken down https://t.co/IzBiFYCXZI) available here: https://t.co/PefMk1JsH6. Very creepy and immature rambling, hallmark of $BCH poor leadership $BCH BUYERS MUST READ pic.twitter.com/HIDdbaoaxU

Francis Pouliot (@francispouliot_) November 12, 2017

2. Centralized mining

Bitcoin Cash mining is highly centralized. If you look at the above image, you will certainly be able to put in perspective what I am talking about.

This is the hash power distribution for Bitcoin Cash mining for the last 144 blocks mined.

If we combine the hash power of Antpool, ViaBTC, and BTC.com, which makes more than 50% hash power, this is detrimental for any coin. To make a 51% attack on Bitcoin Cash would be a decision of three mining parties coming together.

Forgot to mention. BCH is a lot more miner centralized. Because its network hashrate is a lot less than BTC, a small BTC pool can 51% attack it. So it's security is weak because of that. Litecoin doesn't have this problem because Litecoin dominates Scrypt hashing.

Charlie Lee [LTC] (@SatoshiLite) November 12, 2017

The argument is that Bitcoin also had such hashrate distribution in its early days; but dont forget that Bitcoin was trading in pennies at that time. Anyone attacking BTC at that time had no incentive in doing so because it was almost worthless.

But now that Bitcoin Cash is trading well above $1000, its very susceptible to 51% attacks, which is not good. Read more about 51% attacks here.

3. Total full nodes are fewer than Bitcoin

Bitcoin has more than 10,000 active full nodes running, which is one of the most important factors of a truly decentralized currency. This means that anyone attacking Bitcoin would need to have the ability to hijack more than 50% of the 10,000 nodes that are running across the globe.

On the other hand, Bitcoin Cash only has around 1200 nodes as per Coin.Dances node summary.

4. Hard forks without polls

Who does hard forks or upgrades in the currency protocols without polls?

Well,Bitcoin Cash does.

Bitcoin Cash had their hard fork (or protocol upgrade) on 13th November 2017.

The upgrade/fork was done to change the underlying mining algorithm to make it more competitive against Bitcoin and to prevent it from miners abuse in the event of reduced or increased difficulty. Read more about the Bitcoin Cash fork here.

Well, I am not against Bitcoin Cash changing something and trying to be competitive, but they should not try being competitive in this way by doing things without polling the community.

If something is getting upgraded in the protocol, then it has to happen with proper polling and agreements. But this official write-up shows that they didnt have any such polls.

Also, this write-up gives a hint that there is actually no need for polling because their community is so small and censored. In reality, there are only three individuals who made the decision. (Their names arent there but everyone knows who these three were Roger Ver, Jihan Wu, andDeadal Nix.)

You can see how easy it is to upgrade Bitcoin Cash. Their community is comprised of 3 people. They are the miners, the developers, and the users. Funny!!

Bitcoin is the DADDY of cryptocurrencies. Some of the facts that make Bitcoin truly decentralized and much better than Bitcoin Cash are:

I know that some of you might be thinking that I am a huge Bitcoin fan and thats why I am biased towards Bitcoin Cash, but I want you to make one thing clear: I am not really that biased.

I certainly think that Bitcoin Cash has a future, but if it is trying to be Bitcoin and continue down this same path that its on now, its not going to end well.

If you are a Bitcoin Cash fan, then you should try to convince the community that BCH is BCH it cant be Bitcoin. And if Bitcoin Cash continues to be an altcoin and not attack Bitcoin, then I dont think there are any problems.

Even Andreas suggested this to both communities.

Bitcoin and Bitcoin Cash will coexist and serve different use cases, just like Bitcoin and Ethereum. Its not a zero sum game. Work on building your project, not on destroying the other

Andreas (@aantonop) November 12, 2017

On the other hand, I am not naive or ignorant about current challenges that Bitcoin is facing in terms of scalability (despite SegWit implementation).

I am also aware that a huge number of Bitcoin txs are stuck in the mempool.

But lets remember that it wasnt always so easy to send emails in the early days of the internet. Similarly, Bitcoin will scale with the much-anticipated Lightning networks or sidechains in the future. And yes, those scaling solutions need to happen soon, otherwise, there will be more drama like this for ages to come.

Also for the newcomers: Stay away fromRoger Versowned domain Bitcoin.comthat is trying spread this FUD and exclaiming that Bitcoin Cash is Bitcoin.

So thats all from my side in this article.

If you are with me and understand Bitcoins true nature, then do retweet/share this write-up with the Bitcoin community, and join hands in finding permanent solutions to Bitcoins scalability.

Bitcoin vs. Bitcoin Cash: What’s the Difference …

Posted on February 12, 2018 by jessica

Since its inception, there have been questions surrounding Bitcoins ability to scale effectively. Bitcoin is a cryptocurrency that exists within a network of computers, within the blockchain. This is revolutionary ledger-recording technology. It makes ledgers far more difficult to manipulate for a couple of reasons: The reality of what has transpired is verified by majority rule, not by an individual actor. And this network is decentralized; it exists on computers all over the world.

The problem with this technology is that its slow. Like, really slow, especially in comparison to banks that deal with credit card transactions. Visa processes 150 million transactions per day, averaging out to roughly 1,700 transactions per second. And their capability far surpasses that, at 24,000 transactions per second.

How many transactions can the Bitcoin network process per second? Seven. Transactions take about 10 minutes to process. And as the network of Bitcoin users grows, waiting times will get longer, because there are more transactions to process without a change in the underlying technology that processes them.

The latest debates around Bitcoins technology have been concerned with this central problem of scaling and increasing the speed of the transaction verification process. There are two major solutions to this problem, either to make the amount of data that need to be verified in each block smaller, making transactions faster and cheaper or to make the blocks of data bigger, so that more information can be processed at one time.

(Read: Bitcoin Transactions vs. Credit Card Transactions)

In mid July 2017, mining pools and companies representing roughly 80% to 90% of Bitcoin computing power voted to incorporate a technology known as a segregated witness, called SegWit2x. SegWit2x makes the amount of data that needs to be verified in each block smaller, by removing signature data from the block of data that needs to be processed in each transaction, and having it attached in an extended block. Signature data has been estimated to account for up to 65% of data processed in each block, so this is not an insignificant technological shift. Talk of doubling the size of blocksfrom1mbto2mb in November has ramped up, and is expected. Thiswould also go some ways in improving Bitcoins scalability. In mid-October, Bitcoin scientistsfrom Bitcoin Unlimited revealed they had mined the world's first 1GB block, 1,000 times bigger than the normal size.

Bitcoin Cash is a different story. Bitcoin Cash was started by Bitcoin miners and developers equally concerned with the future of the cryptocurrency, and its ability to scale effectively. These individuals had their reservations about the adoption of a segregated witness technology, though. They felt as though SegWit2x did not address the fundamental problem of scalability in a meaningful way, nor did it follow the roadmap initially outlined by Satoshi Nakamoto, the anonymous party that first proposed the blockchain technology behind cryptocurrency. Furthermore, the process of introducing SegWit2x as the road forward was anything but transparent, and there were concerns that its introduction undermined the decentralization and democratization of the currency.

On August 1st, some miners and developers initiated what is known as a hard fork, effectively creating a new currency: Bitcoin Cash. Bitcoin Cash has implemented an increased block size of 8mb, to accelerate the verification process, with an adjustable level of difficulty to ensure the chains survival and transaction verification speed, regardless of the number of miners supporting it. This has raised concerns about the security of Bitcoin Cash.

(For more on cryptocurrency, read: Does Crypto Have Intrinsic Value? It Depends)

This development could mean any number of things for the future of cryptocurrency. The situation is very fluid, and market valuations are both constantly calibrating and volatile. Its going to be difficult to get a clear picture until Bitcoin Cash has been running for a while (or fails),the impact of Bitcoin's segregated witness technology isassessed,and the size of Bitcoin's blocks are doubled.

In a blog post earlier this week titled The Crypto Currency Debate: Future of Money or Speculative Hype?, dean of valuation and NYU Stern Professor Aswath Damordan said that the future of cryptocurrency as a currency, as opposed to a speculative asset as it is so often treated, depends on cryptocurrency developers thinking of their technology as a transaction medium and acting accordingly. Both of these moves seem to be aimed at improving cryptocurrency technology as a medium of exchange.

Improving cryptocurrency as a transaction medium will depend on maintaining the high level of security that Bitcoin has always ensured, while also improving transaction speeds. Bitcoin will continue to be highly secure, but how much its transaction speeds will improve is unclear. Bitcoin Cash, once its difficulty has adjusted, could have transactions processing in two minutes and 30 seconds. The security of the Bitcoin Cash blockchain, though, is unclear.

It will also depend on miners and users vision for the currency. If Bitcoin really does undermine the decentralized nature of the network, and the democratic possibilities of the blockchain technology, people may look elsewhere for a cryptocurrency with more exciting potential. (For more insights on how the market has changed since the fork, read: What's BitcoinCash and Where the Heck Did it Come From?)

Bitcoin Cash Definition | Investopedia

Posted on January 31, 2018 by Danzig

DEFINITION of 'Bitcoin Cash'

Bitcoin cash is a cryptocurrency is a fork of Bitcoin Classic that was created in August 2017. Bitcoin Cash increases the size of blocks, allowing more transactions to be processed.

Since its launch, Bitcoin faced pressure from community members on the topic of scalability. Specifically, that the size of blocks set at 1 megabyte (MB), or a millionbytes, in 2010 would slow down transaction processing times, thus limiting the currencys potential, just as it was gaining in popularity. The block size limit was added to the Bitcoin code in order to prevent spam attacks on the network at a time when the value of a Bitcoins was low. By 2015, the value of Bitcoins had increased substantially and average block size had reached 600 bytes, creating a scenario in which transaction times could run into delays as more blocks reached maximum capacity.

A number of proposals have been made to deal with transaction processing over the years, often focusing on increasing block size. Because the Bitcoin code is not managed by a central authority, changes to the code require buy-in from developers and miners. This consensus-driven approach can lead to proposals taking a long time to finalize. This has resulted in groups creating separateblockchainledgers using new standards, called a fork. Several forks, such as Bitcoin XT and Bitcoin Unlimited, failed to be adopted by a wide audience. Bitcoin Cash, launched in August 2017, is another fork from Bitcoin Classic.

Bitcoin Cash differs from Bitcoin Classic in that it increases the block size from 1 MB to 8 MB. It also removes Segregated Witness (SegWit), a proposed code adjustment designed to free up block space by removing certain parts of the transaction. The goal of Bitcoin Cash is to increase the number of transactions that can be processed, and supporters hope that this change will allow Bitcoin Cash to compete with the volume of transactions that PayPal and Visa can handle by increasing the size of blocks.

Because the computer power required to process larger blocks could price out some smaller miners, critics worry that adopting Bitcoin Cashs approach will lead to power being concentrated in the hands of companies that can afford more and better equipment. Opponents to the fork worry that this will threaten the consensus-driven approach to Bitcoin, as a small number of companies could control Bitcoin and more readily force changes on the community in the future.

A successful hard fork for Bitcoin Cash entails surviving long enough to entice individuals and companies to use and mine the new digital currency if it is able to build substantial interest and reach critical mass. Once this point is reached, however, Bitcoin Cash may find that its success has prompted others to develop their own alternative coins, which would put the same pressure on Bitcoin Cash that it had placed on Bitcoin Classic. Since the issue of scalability tends to be at the forefront of cryptocurrency debates, developers have made increasing block size and improving transaction processing speeds their top focus areas.

Link:

Bitcoin Cash Definition | Investopedia

Bitcoin Cash: The New King of Cryptocurrency? | Investopedia

Posted on January 31, 2018 by jessica

Less than a month ago, a few new lines of code and a verbal agreement forked the Bitcoin blockchain, creating a newer, more nimble version called Bitcoin Cash. Since its arrival on Aug. 1, the infant cryptocurrency has more than doubled in value from $300 to a price north of $600, and investors are now wondering if its popularity poses a serious threat to the Bitcoin throne.

Bitcoin Cash is essentially a clone of the existing Bitcoin blockchain with one important feature: additional block size capacity (more on that later). Those who owned Bitcoin before the split now own an equal amount of Bitcoin Cash, meaning Bitcoin Cash and Bitcoin each now have 16.5 million units in circulation. Multiply Bitcoin Cashs recent price of $607 times 16.5 million units, and you arrive at a market cap of $10.8 billion, making it the third-most valuable cryptocurrency at around 16% of Bitcoins $69 billion market value. An asset with the same value as streaming-music service Spotify or social media giant Twitter was born overnight.

Source: Coinmarketcap.com

Bitcoin Cash got off to a slow start but sprang to life as the cryptocurrencys mining algorithm self-corrected to attract profit-seeking computers, known as miners. These super-computers are the beating heart of the blockchain responsible for verifying and embedding transactions in digital ledgers, called blocks. Once the market noticed a rise in the rate at which blocks were being produced, known as the hash rate, investors bid up the price of the resulting tokens.

Source: Tradingview.com

An Answer to a Years-Long Dispute

When Bitcoin was first introduced in 2009, block sizes were unlimited. To buy and sell Bitcoin, wallets required users to keep a record of the entire blockchain. It was as if one had to download the entire history of Google searches to find something on the internet. This led to an abundance of Denial of Service (DOS) attacks as hackers stuffed blocks with meaningless transactions making it difficult for users with slower computers to transact. To alleviate this problem, the Bitcoin community moved to limit block size to one megabyte (MB)

Currently, the 1 MB block size limits transaction speeds to four to seven per second, which cant compete with Visa's and Paypals 2,000 transactions per second. Newer, innovative wallets permit an increase in block sizes, and the introduction of Bitcoin Cash is necessary to scale for mass adoption as a payment platform.

The new cryptocurrency attempts to solve the scaling problem by increasing existing block sizes from 1 MB to 8 MB, thereby increasing the amount of transactions processed per day and improving transaction speed.

Critics argue that larger block sizes will lead to the centralization of mining operations, as larger blocks require professional hardware. This would run counter to the idea of a decentralized network of miners, and limit oversight of the Bitcoin network to a few large miners and nodes.

What Has Happened Recently

To run a cryptocurrency, miners must confirm and account for recent transactions and mine new blocks. Their profitability is the spread between the value of the block reward (price of the coin x # issued per block) and the amount of resources needed to mine the block (known as the difficulty). The hash rate is the speed at which blocks are created. Higher hash rates make mining coins more lucrative as it increases the opportunity of mining the next block and receiving the reward.

The blockchain contains an important, self-correcting mechanism that can either speed up or slow down the hash rate when necessary. Essentially, the mathematical formula at the heart of the blockchain goes through a difficulty adjustment every 2,016 blocks. The difficulty is set so that 2,016 blocks will be mined just about every two weeks. If the pace is too slow, the difficulty adjusts downwards; and if the pace is too quick, the algorithm becomes more difficult to solve.

As Bitcoin Cash struggled out of the gates to attract miners, its difficulty adjusted sharply downward, making mining an extremely lucrative proposition. Accordingly, Bitcoin miners chased the easy money and shifted capacity to Bitcoin Cash. Hash rates subsequently skyrocketed, and this caused havoc to the original Bitcoin network. In just the past few days, the Bitcoin hash rate has been halvedslowing down the network and raising transaction prices.

Source: Blockchain.info

Reports on social media say that Bitcoin transactions are taking hours or even days to confirm. However, the slower hash rate means that Bitcoins difficulty adjustment will be lowered for the next cycle and lead to an increase in miners.

The Bottom Line

Blockchain miners are now shifting capacity to Bitcoin Cashs larger block-sized network, which is temporarily troublesome for the Bitcoin network. However, the difficulty adjustment for both networks will ensure that Bitcoin remains the king cryptocurrencyat least for now.

Excerpt from:

Bitcoin Cash: The New King of Cryptocurrency? | Investopedia

What is Bitcoin Cash?

Posted on January 31, 2018 by ev1

It's important to know you can own a fraction of Bitcoin Cash . They are divisible down to 8 digits and it is not a requirement to buy 1 full coin.

As it is still relatively early, the ecosystem is not as mature yet and arguably not mainstream ready.

The everyday user may still be overwhelmed or intimidated by this technology, but this continually improves over time.

Merchant adoption is increasing all the time, but there is a limited number of places to spend your crypto in retail locations at the moment.

There are some people who are very threatened by Bitcoin Cash and seek to discredit it as much as possible.

This site contains a Bitcoin Cash Faucet which can send you a small amount of Bitcoin Cash for free. No strings attached. All you need is a wallet to start receiving cryptocurrency.

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What is Bitcoin Cash?

Bitcoin Cash: Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash (BCH)

Posted on January 29, 2018 by Danzig

Bitcoin Cash (BCH) Website:

https://www.bitcoincash.org/

Bitcoin Discussion

/r/BitcoinCash is for discussion focused on Bitcoin Cash (BCH) news, information, and development! For general Bitcoin discussion please continue to use /r/btc.

What is Bitcoin Cash?

Bitcoin Cash brings sound money to the world. Merchants and users are empowered with low fees and reliable confirmations. The future shines brightly with unrestricted growth, global adoption, permissionless innovation, and decentralized development.

All Bitcoin holders as of block 478558 are now owners of Bitcoin Cash. All Bitcoiners are welcome to join the Bitcoin Cash community as we move forward in creating sound money accessible to the whole world. The ticker symbol for Bitcoin Cash is "BCH", but is sometimes referred to as "BCC" on some exchanges/wallets. Please do not confuse "BitConnect" (which also uses the ticker symbol "BCC") with Bitcoin Cash.

Development:

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Original post:

Bitcoin Cash: Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash (BCH)

Bitcoin Cash: Why It’s Forking the Blockchain And What That …

Posted on January 26, 2018 by Danzig

Bitcoin's scaling debate finally seems to be shaking out, but some users aren't happy with the results.

After a few years of debate, it was perhaps to be expected that at least some were going to come away empty-handed. Controversial scaling proposal Segwit2x tried to remedy this by joining two code change ideas the code optimization Segregated Witness (SegWit) and ablock size increase.

Today, SegWit is just a couple of steps away from activating on bitcoin, but some bitcoin users are unhappy about the outcome.

Others who originally backed the Segwit2x proposal appear to be losing confidence in an eventual block size increase andare now taking matters into their own hands by making their own version of bitcoin and they're doing so on a short timeline.

On August 1, at precisely 12:20 UTC, the group claims that they will split off from bitcoin, creating a newcryptocurrency calledBitcoin Cash.

Developer Calin Culianu, who's contributing code toan implementation of Bitcoin Cash, is one user who doesn't like SegWit, suspecting that others feel the same way.

Culianu told CoinDesk:

If the Segwit2x agreement fails to implement the 2x part, which is not entirely unreasonable, and only ends up being being basically SegWit without the 2x, many miners will likely defect to Bitcoin Cash."

So, what is it? And how does it differ from bitcoin?

There are two main changes of note:

Some, including a few of the project's supporters, call Bitcoin Cash an "altcoin," a term that usually denotes a fork of the software that creates a new cryptocurrency, with its own market.

Indeed, the cryptocurrency is currently trading at$461, meaning it's worth about18%of bitcoin's current price of$2,568, in an already-open futures market.

Unlike other altcoins, though, Bitcoin Cash's transaction history would be the same as bitcoin's at least up until the point of the split. So, if and when Bitcoin Cash splits off, users would have bitcoin on both blockchains.

Another difference is the project says it will support multiple implementations of its software, a move that's not surprising given the criticism that Bitcoin Core's software is too dominant on the bitcoin network.

BitcoinABC is the first software to implement the Bitcoin Cash protocol, but the goal is for there to be many implementations.

Culianu said that both Bitcoin Unlimited and Bitcoin Classic, other implementations that aim to increase bitcoins block size, are working on a version compatible with Bitcoin Cash.

These might or might not be ready for August 1.

So far, most bitcoin companies, mining pools, users and bitcoin developers seem uninterested in the effort. Yet, there are some eager supporters.

Beijing-based miningfirm ViaBTC, which boasts roughly 4% of bitcoins computing power, is the clear ringleader.

The firm, which also operates an exchange, has become the first to list the cryptocurrency and also has plans to launch a new mining pool dedicated solely to Bitcoin Cash. (Though, so far, it's not clear how much of its 4% mining hashrate it will commit to the effort.)

Asked if he believed Segwit2x would fulfill its roadmap, CEO Haipo Yang responded: "I doubt it."

Further, Bitcoin Cash has attracted support from some users who want a block size increase, as well as developers of other proposals such as Bitcoin Classic and Bitcoin Unlimited.

What might be more surprising, though, is who's not involved.

Even former supporters, including mining firms Bitcoin.com and Bitmain, seem hesitant to back the effort. For now, they remain committed to controversial scaling proposal Segwit2x.

Mining company Bitmain eveninspiredBitcoin Cash. Yet, the firm said that they only planned on going through with making the switch under certain conditions. Still, the firm might support both Segwit2x and Bitcoin Cash in the future.

In a PSA statement, Bitcoin.com said that it will allow miners in its pool to choose if they want to mine the Bitcoin Cash token BCC.

For now, though, it will mine on Segwit2x chain, though it said it "will immediately shift all company resources to supporting Bitcoin Cash exclusively" if the block size increase part of SegWit, scheduled for roughly three months from now, falls through.

There are a few reasons users and mining pools might like to break off from bitcoin:

This mix of ideological and technical reasons was also on display in conversations with users.

When asked by CoinDesk what BitcoinABC's goal is, Culianuresponded:

"To save bitcoin. We want to scale bitcoin up so that it won't die. It's already a bit sick and dying."

Many other efforts over the last couple of years have said they would split off from bitcoin, if they gained enough support from those operating the computers that secure the network. But, to date, no group has actually carried through with this plan so far.

Bitcoin Cash might be unique in that it's actually committing to a deadline to split bitcoin into two, and that deadline is less than a week away.

If miners and users indeed go ahead with the split, it would mark the first time a cryptocurrency split off from bitcoin, carrying with it bitcoins transaction history.

Like past efforts intended to replace the bitcoin used today with a new bitcoin, however, Bitcoin Cash has the same goal, but it seems willing to wait and see if users join the effort.

Rather than call it bitcoin, ViaBTC, as well as a group of bitcoin companies in China, signed an agreementto label it a "competitive currency," not the "real" bitcoin.

The move could set up the split to happen more quickly, as in the past exchanges have expressed confusion over how to handle a fork.

If a new cryptocurrencysplits off from the main bitcoin network, it will mark a first. So, some users are curious to see what happens.

Still, without much support from miners and users, it might notend up having that much of an impact on the course of the main network.

Nonetheless, it might if be worth watching if the second half of Segwit2x falls through. That's when it might see some more supporters.

Culianu, for example, concluded on an optimistic note:

My secret gut feeling is Bitcoin Cash may surprise all of us. It is not entirely impossible that it will be the de-facto bitcoin after a few months. The much roomier 8 MB block space is attractive."

Bitcoin voucher image via CoinDesk archives

The leader in blockchain news, CoinDesk is an independent media outlet that strives for the highest journalistic standards and abides by a strict set of editorial policies. Interested in offering your expertise or insights to our reporting? Contact us at news@coindesk.com.

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