They are both holders of value, and while Bitcoin has been the holder of the most value up until now, Bitcoin Cash is gaining users and value fast.
Bitcoin Cash is still less than a year old. So, it is still in the stage of capturing and realizing its own place in the crypto market. Many people speculate that Bitcoin Cash might take a good portion of Bitcoin’s market share, making it the new dominant crypto in the industry. This is because Bitcoin Cash has addressed the scaling issues that Bitcoin faces, allowing more people to use it with ease and lower fees.
If the Bitcoin developer community doesn’t find a way to agree to a mutual update to the Bitcoin code to fix its problems, Bitcoin might lose in the war between BTC vs BCH. This means that more people will likely switch to using BCH as their main store of value and transactional currency.
In the recent past, Bitcoin Cash has been worth as low as 5% of Bitcoin, to as high as 33%.
Bitcoin Cash vs Bitcoin: The Features
Bitcoin Cash Advantages
The main advantage of Bitcoin Cash is that it is cheaper and faster to use. This is because it is more scalable, meaning that more people can transact on the blockchain at any given time.
Its development team is quick to implement solutions that make the blockchain more scalable. Which gives it great future potential for adoption and use.
It is also cheaper to move around between exchanges. Whenever its price surges, it is a great trading asset against Bitcoin and a solid investment to hedge against Bitcoin, should Bitcoin lose its market dominance one day.
Note: Nothing in this article is financial advice! You should always consult a financial advisor before investing.
Bitcoin Cash Disadvantages
Bitcoin Cash does not have as much investor confidence as Bitcoin. Also, its adoption rate and market penetration is much lower than Bitcoin’s. This has a lot to do with the fact that this coin is much newer than Bitcoin.
While the price of BCH is around 10-15% of the price of Bitcoin, the cost of Bitcoin Cash mining is relatively the same as mining Bitcoin. This means that someone who mines Bitcoin Cash makes 50-60% less profit than someone mining Bitcoin with the same equipment. For this reason, miners are not as quick to mine Bitcoin Cash.
Finally, when it comes to trading, BCH has far less trading pairs than BTC, making it less tradeable than Bitcoin. All these disadvantages work towards making Bitcoin Cash’s adoption rates and prices much lower than Bitcoin’s.
Bitcoin Advantages Over Bitcoin Cash
As the original cryptocurrency, Bitcoin is the base currency of the entire sector. It is what all other cryptocurrencies trade against (as well as ETH, most of the time) and is tradable on most exchanges. Bitcoin is the most popular and has the most trading pairs with other cryptocurrencies.
As of 23rd March 2018, Bitcoin makes up 44.5% of the entire capital of the crypto-sector and is considered the Gold standard of a rapidly growing industry.
The biggest advantage Bitcoin has over Bitcoin Cash is its community and cult-like following: it’s the first cryptocurrency anyone hears about. It is super, super popular — if your Grandma knows about one cryptocurrency, I’ll bet you $100 it’s Bitcoin!
Bitcoin Disadvantages Over Bitcoin Cash
The disadvantages of Bitcoin when compared to Bitcoin Cash mainly regard the scalability issues facing Bitcoin. Bitcoin is older, slower and costs a lot more per transaction. It is likely that as the sector grows, Bitcoin will continue to lose its dominance to these other coins.
Another disadvantage is that the core development team of Bitcoin is not united as good as other crypto teams, like that of Ether, for example. They appear to be divided as a group and lacking clear leadership.
This makes the implementation of scaling solutions more difficult to agree on and implement to the network — not good at all!
