Bitcoin Cash is a fork of Bitcoin with upgraded rules regarding consensus which allows it to grow and scale. Bitcoin is open source software so that means anyone with the skills and knowledge can make a copy of the programming that powers bitcoin (a fork) and modify it to suit their needs – and that’s exactly what the developers of Bitcoin Cash did.
How Bitcoin Cash works
The developers of Bitcoin Cash felt it was necessary to create a fork of bitcoin to break through the 3 transactions per second maximum that bitcoin faces today. Moreover, the upper limit of 1Mb per block had become too small. Citing skyrocketing fees and confirmation times of days, the developers decided the best approach was to fork bitcoin and create Bitcoin Cash as of August 1 2017. Interestingly, any bitcoin you might have been holding was also transferred to Bitcoin Cash, so you may already have some if you had bitcoin holdings on August 1, 2017.
Bitcoin Cash Mining
Another way to get Bitcoin Cash is to mine it. Mining can be profitable if you have the right mining hardware and a favorable electricity rate. Because Bitcoin Cash is a fork of bitcoin, it uses the same proof of work algorithm, called SHA-256. As a result, you can use the same mining hardware that’s used for bitcoin mining. Also, because the Bitcoin Cash mining difficulty is so high, mining with GPUs (graphics cards) is no longer feasible and so only ASIC miners can be used to mine Bitcoin Cash. There are currently three companies that manufacture ASIC miners that are compatible with Bitcoin Cash: Bitmain AntMiner, Canaan Avalon, and Pangolin Miner WhatsMiner. To use an ASIC miner to mine Bitcoin Cash, simply point it to a Bitcoin Cash mining pool instead of a bitcoin mining pool and you’ll be mining Bitcoin Cash instead.
Due to Bitcoin Cash’s relatively low price, compared to bitcoin, you may wish to verify that your mining effort will pay off by using a Bitcoin Cash mining profitability calculator: http://www.mycryptobuddy.com/BitcoinCashMiningCalculator. Simply fill in the fields as required and then scroll to view a table that lists the hourly, daily, weekly, and monthly profitability.
Bitcoin Cash Exchanges
Another way of getting Bitcoin Cash is to buy it at an exchange. A large number of exchanges support Bitcoin Cash including:
- hitbtc.com
- bitfinex.com
- binance.com
- kraken.com
- gdax.com
- kucoin.com
Bitcoin Cash Wallets
You store you Bitcoin Cash in a wallet. The popular bitcoin hardware wallets are also compatible with Bitcoin Cash an include the Ledger wallet, Trezor, and KeepKey wallet. There are some mobile wallets that work with Bitcoin Cash including Mobi (for Android and iOS), Unit (for Android and iOS), BTC.com (for Android and iOS), Stash (for Android only), Coinnomi (for Android and iOS), and WebMoney Keeper (for Android and iOS). There are also desktop wallets you can use including Exodus (Windows, Mac, and Linux), Bitpay (Windows, Mac, and Linux), Jaxx (Windows, Mac, and Linux, Android, and iOS), and Melis (Windows, Mac, and Linux). There’s an online wallet service at StrongCoin.com which may be more convenient in case you’re worried about losing your private key.
Conclusion
This article reviewed Bitcoin cash, how it’s different from bitcoin, how to mine Bitcoin Cash, how to buy Bitcoin Cash and how to store Bitcoin Cash.