Bitcoin Cash hard forks
Believe it or not, BCH had a hard fork too. In fact, more than once.
The first of these was launched in November 2018, when the blockchain split and a new cryptocurrency, Bitcoin SV, was formed. "SV" stands for Satoshi's Vision. Satoshi Nakamoto is the creator of Bitcoin.
Similar to the original BTC fork, the BCH fork arose out of a dispute between developers over the direction of the blockchain, described as a "civil war" between various parts of the BCH community.
Basically, it all came down to block size. On the one hand, Roger Ver and company wanted to keep the block size at 8MB. On the other hand, there was Craig Stephen Wright and company who wanted to increase the block size to 128MB.
Further chain splits occurred every six months, resulting in network upgrades. However, even BCH fan Roger Ver expressed his displeasure with this, stating that the planned "controversial hard forks" are "a big problem" and that he "would like it to end." Regular hard forks are generally not seen as positive for cryptocurrencies as they destabilize the system. Indeed, this is what happened with BCH. This was reflected in its price, we will talk about this later in the article.
Attack threat 51%
The threat of a 51% attack raised questions about the security of the BCH blockchain. Such an event occurs when groups of miners can gain more than half of the hashing power of the blockchain and thus take control of the network. If you look at the BTC network, this is rather unlikely due to the sheer amount of hashing power and the cost associated with carrying out such an attack. However, the 51% attack has happened to other blockchains in the past, including Bitcoin Gold in 2018, when attackers stole $ 18 million worth of cryptocurrency.
While this did not happen on the BCH blockchain, concerns have emerged. In April 2020, a BCH halving took place, the miners' reward decreased from 12.5 BCH to 6.25 BCH. As a result, the hash rate of the network dropped significantly as miners moved to more profitable businesses. In turn, this significantly reduced the cost of conducting a 51% attack (less than $ 10,000 per hour at one stage). Fortunately, no such attack took place. However, this has raised constant, troubling questions in the BCH community regarding its safety.
So far, we've been a little critical in assessing whether BCH has been successful. So was he successful in any area?
Bitcoin Cash as a payment method
Since BCH was founded with the aim of providing consistent and efficient pay, there has been some success in this area in recent years. As a sure sign of its growing status, especially in October 2020, BTH was listed by PayPal as a cryptocurrency (along with BTC, Ethereum, and Litecoin). Customers will now be able to buy and sell products using their accounts. In February 2020, it was estimated that over 4,300 stores worldwide are now accepting BCH (so this number is likely to be higher by now).