Is Bitcoin Cash different from Bitcoin?

Bitcoin Cash is a 'fork' of the original Bitcoin. It was founded on August 1, 2017, because members of the Bitcoin ecosystem couldn't agree on how to scale the cryptocurrency.

The main source of disagreement was the term "block size," which refers to the number of transactions that may be completed per second (also known as "throughput"). Because transactions are made up of data, a bigger block size allows for more transactions to be packed into each block, resulting in increased throughput.

For years, the Bitcoin protocol had set a limit of 1MB for each block. As the number of Bitcoin users increased, competition for the limited block size led to increased transaction fees and longer settlement times. While Bitcoin's utility for settling high-value transactions and/or transactions where speed is less important remained under these conditions, it lost a lot of its utility as a medium of exchange for small-value purchases when fees and settlement time are critical. In other words, it lost its utility as 'currency.'

Bitcoin isn't a one-dimensional protocol. Bitcoin's 'governance,' or the process of integrating changes, is a quasi-political process based on deliberation, persuasion, and volition. To put it another way, the public decides what Bitcoin is.

When it came to scaling Bitcoin, one side felt compelled to keep block sizes at 1MB. They argued that scaling Bitcoin 'off the chain,' that is, on a second-layer solution, was preferable, with the 'on-chain' base settlement layer reserved for larger transactions. The other side sought to expand the block size so that more transactions could be done in each block. This immediate update was viewed as a straightforward way to keep transactions quick and reliable while keeping fees low.

A 'hard fork,' or a period in time when two versions of Bitcoin diverged, occurred as a result of the Bitcoin community's inability to agree on the change. Bitcoin Cash (BCH) was given to the version that contained the block size expansion, while Bitcoin (BTC) was kept for the unmodified version (BTC).