Bitcoin Cash was created on August 1, 2017, as a hard fork of Bitcoin — the outcome of one of crypto history's most famous disputes, the “block size war.” The community had been divided for years: the “Big Blockers” camp (early Bitcoin investor Roger Ver and Chinese mining company Bitmain, led by Jihan Wu) pushed to increase the block size for more transactions and lower fees, while the “Small Blockers” camp favored off-chain (Layer 2) solutions like the Lightning Network and the SegWit upgrade.
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At the fork, every BTC holder received BCH 1:1.
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Initial block size: 8 MB (versus Bitcoin's 1 MB); a further hard fork in May 2018 increased it to 32 MB and introduced simple smart-contract functionality.
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November 2018: the BCH community itself split in a costly “hash war” — between Bitcoin Cash ABC (backed by Bitmain/Roger Ver) and Bitcoin SV (Satoshi Vision, led by Craig Wright, aiming to restore the original protocol). Most exchanges kept the BCH ticker on the ABC chain.
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2020: a further split produced Bitcoin Cash Node (BCHN), which has since become the leading implementation.
Like Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash has a fixed final supply of 21 million and runs on Proof-of-Work — the key difference lies in block size and target audience: BCH positions itself for everyday, low-cost payments, while BTC positions primarily as a store of value.