by Bitcoin Cash (BCH), the 24th largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization as of year-end 2021, and the most prominent of the several bitcoin forks, had a split on November 15, 2018 into Bitcoin Cash and Bitcoin SV.
By hard forking, the original cryptocurrency didn’t stop orIts protocol just followed suit while a second currency, Bitcoin SV, was being generated with new protocols. The two token systems will now continue to grow together and run side by side.
The old bitcoin cash was Bitcoin ABC, while the new version will be called Bitcoin SV. The SV in its name stands for “Satoshi’s Vision,” which is a nod to famous bitcoin developer Satoshi Nakamoto.
A hard fork typically occurs when miners and developers disagree about updates to the software governing a digital token. As a result, one group continues using the same rules while the other creates a new blockchain with updated software. This process generates a second currency.
The hard fork of Bitcoin Cash is due to the rising tensions among developers. When Amaury Sechet, a BCH developer proposed an upgrade that would change the order in which transactions are carried out on the blockchain, conflict arose and has only gotten worse since.
As the conflict escalated, members of the BCH community chose sides between two major influential figures in digital currency: Roger Ver and Craig Wright. Though they both advocate for digital currencies as a whole and Bitcoin Cash specifically, they have been unable to reach an agreement…
“Bitcoin Jesus” Roger Ver, who was one of the first people to publicly support Bitcoin, has taken a stand in favor of the new software upgrade. This means that he is currently supporting Bitcoin Cash instead of the proposed hard fork currency.
In contrast, Wright believes that the BCH software should expand the maximum block size from 32MB to 128MB. According to Wright, this change would be more in keeping with Satoshi’s original idea for bitcoin; as a result, the nickname “Satoshi’s Vision” was created.
On the day of the split, analysts forecasted that Bitcoin ABC would likely receive up to 60% of total hash power, as most miners tend to dedicate their computing energy towards whichever coin offers a higher profit.
On the day of the split, Bitcoin Cash was priced at about $289 per coin, whereas Bitcoin SV was valued at about $96.50 per coin, significantly lower than before the split.
Several of the world’s most extensive digital currency exchanges became involved in the process, if nothing else to vocalize their support of the fork. Exchanges like Coinbase or Binance let their users know that they were each eligible to receive one new token for every old token they owned at the time of forksplit. Contrarily, BitMEX announced via blog post that its contracts “will settle at a price on either Bitcoin ABC or Bitcoin SV.”
Some exchanges allowed customers to pre-trade both of the potential new coins, which is largely unprecedented. One reason for this may be to allow the digital currency community a chance to show its support for one coin option over the other through trading actions.
As of March 16, 2022, Bitcoin Cash is selling for about $289 per coin, with a market capitalization of $3.5 billion, whereas Bitcoin SV is priced at $75 and has a market cap of $137 million.
