Bitcoin Cash: for Beginners like me

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Avatar for Serg0213
4 years ago

As i've read and studied some articles about read.cash, you can be rewarded by therandomrewarder. This rewards can be converted to bitcoin cash and can be withdrawn. So since we are talking about bitcoin cash, i tried to study and learn about bitcoin cash. And here is what i found out.

Btw, i'm Serg from the country Philippines. If you happened to stumble upon my articles and feel like its worth it. Please consider subscribing.

What is Bitcoin Cash?

Bitcoin cash is hard fork of bitcoin.

Fork is an alternate version of an original coin. I'm gonna write about forks on my next article.

So why it is created?

Before answering that, let us learn first about the most controversial topic in the bitcoin code. The block size and scalability issue.

The block size issue

Bitcon transactions don't get confirmed easily. In order for a transactions to be confirmed, it needs to be included to be part of a block of transactions in the bitcoin ledger known as the blockchain. A new block of transaction is added into a blockchain in an average about 10 minutes.

Adding bitcoin transactions to a block needs storage space and the maximum capacity of a block is 1mb. An average transaction size is about 370kb, so an average transaction of a block can hold is 2700.

Scalability issue

27oo transaction per minute is 4.6 transactions per second. This means when a lot of people wants to send bitcoin during a price rally, transactions gets stuck in a very long queue waiting to enter a block to be confirmed.

Bitcoin allows you to enter immediately the block by paying higher fee.

Because of the scalabilty issues, two different camps emerge.

Bigblockers (BITMAIN and Roger Ver)

With long confirmation and higher fees, bigblockers were afraid that this issue would prevent bitcoin from becoming what Satoshi Nakamoto (bitcoin inventor) initially intended, a peer-to-peer payment system.

The supporters of this camp suggested to increase the block size. So if we increase the bitcoin block size to 8mb, it can confirm 8x as many transactions per second. This will reduce the congestion in the bitcoin blockchain.

Smallblockers

The opposing camp wanted to keep the block size while finding a solution optimizing transaction size and handling in order to unabling scaling.

One solution that si proposed is segregated witness (SegWit). SegWit is an upgrade bitcoin protocol which among other things reduces the transaction size by 75%. This means that 1mb SegWit block can hold the same transaction with the non SegWit block.

They also proposed the develipment of lightning network, a second layer on top of the bitcoin protocol that allows instant and feeless transactions.

I will create an article to further discuss lightning network

Smallblockers are against in increasing the block size because they firmly believe that in the long run, it will hurt bitcoins decentralization and functionality.

They believe that a 8mb or 32mb block will travel slowly to the network than 1mb block. Once the block reaches a computer in the network, that computer needs to verify all the transactions in that block. If the block is too big, it may not able to finish verifying all the transactions before the next block arrives. This may cause lagging of the network that could lead to dispute in the bitcoin ledger.

Oversized blocks reduces the number of participants in the network. If only a handful big companies can validate all the transactions with high end computers. We are taking away bitcoin advantage that is to have a large amount of participants to make sure no one is breakibg the rules.

The arguments lasted for years until the August 2017 wherein bitcoin is making its first step over the $12,000 mark and the network is being crowded due to an overflow of transactions. This results in the delay of transactions and high fees where people started to out bid others to cut in line to be confirmed faster.

The end result of the two camps in the block size debate is they did what they initially had to do leaving to the users to decide which coin to adopt as the true bitcoin.

In August 1st, 2017, smallblockers activated SegWit on its original bitcoin protocol while bigblocker created bitcoin cash, a bitcoin fork with an 8mb block size.

Initially it is unclear which bitcoin will win wherein winning in cryptocurrency terms having a longer block chain or ledger transactions.

More miners means more computational power and more computational power means longer and more robust blockchain

Bitcoin cash had support from the bitcoin giant BITMAIN and as a result, the original bitcoin hashing power was cut nearly in half when the fork occured. However, when the dust settled it became clear that the original bitcoin remains strong even after the fork.

Since the fork, bitcoin cash remained on the top of the cryptocurrency chart. The coin is backed mainly by Roger Ver, a liberitarian who allegedly owns around 100000 bitcoin.

Bitcoin VS Bitcoin Cash

Bitcoin cash is likely similar to bitcoin but with some exceptions.

First, its block size is bigger. When it first started out, it has a size of 8mb block. Later on it went on an update and its block size limit increased to 32mb. In practice, bitcoin cash isn't as popular as bitcoin and its blocks really surpassed the 1mb size of transactions.

Second, it does not support lightning network.

Finally, bitcoin cash adjusted its mining difficulty for minig new blocks quickly than the original bitcoin.

Bitcoin Cash own hard fork

In November 2018, bitcoin cash went to its own hard fork. This time the two camps where the original bitcoin cash (abc) and sv (satoshis vision).

Bitcoin abc was led by Roger Ver and Bitmain and SV was led by Craig Wright, previously claimed as Satoshi Nakamoto but never supplied ample proof and Calvin Ayre, who owns the largest bitcoin cash mining pool, coingeek.

There are two differences between the bitcoin cash version.

Bitcoin abc remains its block size to 32mb and bitcoin SV increase its block size to 128mb.

Bitcoin abc added a smart contract functionality into its code while bitcoin SV choose not to accept this change.

This November 2020, a new hard fork in bitcoin cash will commence. What will happen? Nobody still knows.

Bitcoin cash is a hard fork of bitcoin. It was created to increase the block size of transactions for faster transactions and lower fees.

Any suggestions or reaction, please leave a comment. I will try as hard as i could to answer all of it.

Good night everyone!

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4 years ago

Comments

You are not the only beginner in the world of cryptocurrencies, there are many of us, but it is important to learn, to find wallets where it is the smallest and to follow the growth of cryptocurrency prices, because I personally see great prospects in the world of cryptocurrencies.

$ 0.00
4 years ago

Yea. As a person i am still learning. Can you suggest where can i learn more about cryptocurrencies? Or where to start even in a little amount.

$ 0.00
4 years ago

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCHop-jpf-huVT1IYw79ymPw I suggest to find something more on this youtbe channel, he is really great.

$ 0.00
4 years ago

Okay. Will do check that channel. Thank you

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4 years ago

Nice article

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4 years ago

Great

$ 0.00
4 years ago

Good one

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4 years ago