Altseason is here! Driven by the gains of prodigal uncle Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash rose by over thirty percent in the last 24 hours, which, at its high, took it to a price of just over $627 in the early hours of the morning (UTC). 

That’s still some way off its former all-time high of $4,355.62, set on 20 December, 2017, but, like its namesake Bitcoin SV, Bitcoin Cash is one of many altcoins benefitting from Bitcoin’s historic bull run. 

Bitcoin Cash emerged in 2017 as developers responded to calls to modify Bitcoin’s transaction format to handle the growing rate of transactions. As some of Bitcoin's developers mobilized behind Bitcoin Improvement Proposal number BIP141 (SegWit), another group of activists, investors, developers and largely Chinese miners rallied behind a different proposal: to increase Bitcoin’s block size from 1 MB to 8MB. 

In August 2017 the hard fork led to the establishment of two currencies bearing the name Bitcoin. Bitcoin (BTC) and Bitcoin Cash (BCH). 

Over a year later, after a network vote increased Bitcoin Cash’s block size from 8MB to 32MB, it once more became divided by factionalism. By 15 November 2018 another hard fork was announced, led by developers Jihan Wu and Roger Ver, who pitched the software Bitcoin ABC (Adjustable Blocksize Cap). 

The second camp, led by Australian computer scientist Craig Wright, a man who claims to be Bitcoin inventor ‘Satoshi Nakamoto,’ though these claims are highly disputed,  proposed the alternative software Bitcoin SV (Satoshi’s Vision). This became the blockchain powering BSV.

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The views and opinions expressed by the author are for informational purposes only and do not constitute financial, investment, or other advice.