What Is Bitcoin Cash (BCH) and How Can You Spend It?

Bitcoin Cash is a cryptocurrency launched in 2017. The crypto came to be from a hard fork of the Bitcoin blockchain, which resulted from diverging views within the community regarding what Bitcoin should be and how it should work.

But what exactly is Bitcoin Cash? And, how can you spend it?

What Is Bitcoin Cash?

A fork of the Bitcoin blockchain, Bitcoin Cash is nearly identical to Bitcoin, with some very key differences. Namely, faster on-chain transactions and lower fees. Bitcoin Cash is sometimes labeled as an altcoin, but that is a label applied to all cryptocurrencies other than Bitcoin.

When Satoshi Nakamoto launched Bitcoin, he made it clear that it was intended function as peer-to-peer electronic payment system. However, by 2017, it had become clear that this was not the direction Bitcoin had taken. Bitcoin’s volatile nature coupled with an increasingly congested network were translated into long transaction times and high fees.

So, a group of miners and developers from within the Bitcoin community created Bitcoin Cash to address Bitcoin’s shortcomings. How? By increasing block-size to 32MB, meaning each block can fit more transactions.

While today a Bitcoin transaction can take around 10 minutes, one on the Bitcoin Cash network takes only around 2 minutes. Also, Bitcoin Cash transaction fees are only around 20 cents. This makes Bitcoin Cash more suitable as a peer-to-peer electronic payment system.

How Can You Spend Your Bitcoin Cash?

Although cryptocurrencies aren’t yet widely adopted, there are some places and some ways to spend your Bitcoin Cash without the need to convert it into fiat currency.

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