WHAT IS BITCOIN CASH?
We have Bitcoin Cash (BCH) today because of Bitcoin (BTC). When Bitcoin had a huge boost in popularity, traffic became a problem. The big increase in transactions caused problems that Bitcoin developers tried to figure out.
What came out of it were two solutions from two groups, but neither could come to an agreement that would keep the Bitcoin community together.
So on August 1st, 2017 they split: One group stayed with Bitcoin, and one group decided to break off from the original to create a new version: Bitcoin Cash.
Since the split (or fork), we now have two different versions that follow different technical rules.
HOW IS BITCOIN CASH DIFFERENT FROM BITCOIN?
Bitcoin Cash (BCH) is just like Bitcoin (BTC), except that it can process transactions quicker and will never have high fees, even when there is high traffic. It’s called Bitcoin Cash because it moves like cash.
BCH works just like BTC, but remember that you can’t send BTC to a BCH address; although they sound the same, they are two different currencies.
- If you’re sending funds to a BCH address, be on the lookout for addresses that start with a “q”. Sometimes they will have a prefix: “bitcoincash:qp…”
- BTC addresses will start with a number like “1” or “3”