In 2009, a person or group of people known as Satoshi Nakamoto created Bitcoin. It was the first digital currency and it held the idea of decentralisation of currency was favoured by many. Within a few years, its value reached 20K in 2017.
One block of Bitcoin—which has a maximum capacity of 1 megabyte (MB)—can be mined every 10 minutes, which makes it slow and limits the transaction rate to around 10 per second. This has become a big problem for scaling and could have happened with any widely adopted coin.
Debate - The Blocksize
There are two different sides to this debate—the big-blockers and the small-blockers. The former want the block size to be raised, believing that an increase in block size would solve the problem of bandwidth issues. The latter are more for working with off-chain transactions, as they believe that increasing the block size would make it tougher for new users to enter the market and help with centralisation. This is why Bitcoin Cash was created: many doubting sides took part in its creation process. Key creators include Roger Ver, Jihan Wu and Deadal Nix.
What Thing Makes Bitcoin Cash and Bitcoin different?
The size of the Block
Bitcoin blocks are limited to 1 megabyte, while Bitcoin Cash has no such limit and can handle up to 8 megabytes per block. This allows for more transactions, but it also needs more storage, stopping many from participating. You will need a better computer and bigger hard drive—all this costing more than before.
Mining Algorithm
The second big difference is an algorithm change. The algorithm for Bitcoin Cash (BCH) is more flexible, so that more miners would be willing to come in and compete for the coins. However, this strategy didn't really work, and led to people coming and going and creating block times which could not be predicted. This is why the Difficulty Adjustment Algorithm was included. To have more predictability, mining difficulty became more flexible.
Pros and Cons
In order to choose a better option, you have to consider your goals. Bitcoin is focused on decentralisation and a public status, but it is slow and costly to use. Bitcoin Cash, however, has no scaling issues and is fast and cheap; however, Bitcoin Cash lacks real decentralisation because 3 pools hold half of the hashing power. Rick Falkvinge even runs a major Bitcoin Cash project as CEO.
How Does the Future Hold - Bitcoin
There is a real war between the two technologies at the moment, with both trying to get more miners and bring down the other one. The dispute over whether Bitcoin Cash is the real Bitcoin has become so heated that even the government got involved in propaganda, shocking many people. Nobody can really say what the future holds for cryptocurrency, as the resolution of this debate is unclear. It’s advisable to stay away from anyone who makes predictions about crypto futures; however, we can say that BCH helped solve scalability issues by being more lightweight than Bitcoin 10 times over and faster than both of them. With Bitcoin 10 times larger than it was before, fees will naturally rise while transaction speeds remain consistent.