BCH's future. Where from here?

Bitcoin Cash (BCH) is one of the biggest and most important forks of Bitcoin (BTC).

The crypto currency came into existence in mid 2017, just when the well known crypto bull run was underway. At the time, developers and miners were deliberating possible solutions that would help BTC solve its scalability issue. Bitcoin, for all its popularity, fame and value, has quite a few flaws. Its blockchain is very slow, and it can only handle a handful of transactions per block.

Developers and miners came up with two solutions making the needed data to be verified smaller/lower, and increasing the data per block. However, not everyone agreed with this, so a part of the community/organization split off and caused a hard fork that led to the creation of Bitcoin Cash.

BCH blocks are now capable of handling 8 MB of data, as opposed to Bitcoin's 1 MB, the amount of data thats needed to be verified for the new coin became smaller since it is based on the technology known as segregated witness, or SegWit2x.

As a result, BCH is a faster blockchain that can, in theory, handle more transactions, and do it quickly than its father Bitcoin.

Bitcoin Cash became an official crypto currency on July 24, 2017, and as at then, it was believed to be a better version of Bitcoin at least by some. It attracted much attention for its price to start growing rather quickly.

BCH PRICE VALUE WHEN IT WAS LAUNCHED

The price of the coin increased rapidly, reaching its all-time high by December 21, 2017. When the coin was launched, its price sat at $543. Less than halve a year later, it hit $3,556, right around the time when Bitcoin itself hit $20,000.

Those familiar with the crypto history likely know that the following year, 2018, was not kind to the industry. In the second half of January 2018, crypto prices started crashing down, which marked the beginning of a year and a half-long crypto winter.

The price of BCH followed this trend, although it did try to the best of its capability to resist it. The coin kept falling as day, weeks and months went by, and it eventually reached the height it had back when it was first launched.

Unfortunately, the crypto winter was far from the last problem that BCH experienced. The project was programmed to have a hard fork of its own by November 2018, where it would implement new upgrades. The initial Bitcoin Cash chain was supposed to be dropped, and the one that forked away from the original chain was supposed to become the new main chain.

But, similarly to how Bitcoin cash came to be when the community could not agree on what to do with BTC, BCH supporters also could not tell on how to proceed with the project. This led to the invention of BCH's new rival, Bitcoin SV (BSV), and a hash war that further knocked Bitcoin Cash value to a new low prince of around $80 per coin.

Since then, the BCH/USD price has seen remarkable recovery, though it never managed to reach its launch price, much less its all-time high.

The coin saw several upswings in 2019, and even in early 2020. However, BCH price remained stable between February and November, mostly rising and falling between $230 and $270, mostly going above or below these two levels, but usually staying between them.

At the moment, the BCH trend is not at all synonymous to the one dictated by BTC, which is interesting, considering fact that BCH did follow Bitcoin's lead in the past.

While BTC price has surged by many thousands of dollars in the past few months or so from $13,000 to $18,000 the BCH price remains mostly unchanged, apart from the mentioned small fluctuations.

BCH 2021 AND BEYOND PRICE PREDICTION

BCH's situation has caused many to become very interested in the BCH predictions for the next year, as well as all those that will follow.

When it comes to Bitcoin Cash next year(2021) predictions, there are some experts that are quite bullish. Roger Ver, for example, has previously said that BCH might see a 100% price increase over the following 12 months. If true, the coin would go above $500 by next November.

Of course, Ver gave this prediction before the latest hard fork happened, and since then, he said that hard forking like this could badly damage BCH. One issue with giving accurate Bitcoin Cash price predictions is that BCH is still somehow new with only three and halve years worth of data chart as compared to BTC that has 12 years worth of data chart.

Some BCH predictions are even more optimistic than what Ver expects, and these ones believe that BCH may rise above $700 by July 2021, and maybe reach this price again in September 2021 after a brief correction.

For the long-term BCH predictions for 2022 and beyond some believe that the BCH price will eventually fall to an average of $252 in the first month of 2022, with a potential to rise to $375 by the end of 2022. Long Forecast, on the other hand, expects BCH to drop to only $50 by the end of 2023, indicating a negative long-term Bitcoin Cash prediction.

I believe things will begin to get better from there, however, at least according to other forecasting sources. For example, BCH is said will hit $1,138 by December 2025, and then surge to $1,399 by 2026 as believed by DigitalCoinPrice.

IS BCH A GOOD INVESTMENT?

That depends on your investment plan for the coin. Going by the long-term predictions, the situation for BCH is going to become worse before becoming better. In other words, if you are looking at long term investment in the coin (like 5-6yrs), you could possibly invest now and get your profit by 2025/2026. However, predictions for 2022 are not very optimistic.