Bitcoin Cash and Bitcoin SV are both cryptocurrencies carrying the name Bitcoin. However, they are different from Bitcoin, the largest cryptocurrency by market cap. Bitcoin was the first cryptocurrency ever created, and these ones only came after.
You may have heard of both Bitcoin Cash and Bitcoin SV, but do you know the difference between the two? Well in this guide, we will discuss the two cryptocurrencies and highlight the differences between the two to help you distinguish them the next time you come across them.
What is Bitcoin Cash?
Bitcoin Cash is a cryptocurrency that came from Bitcoin. Technically, it was forked from Bitcoin, I’ll explain. Cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin store transaction history on what is called the blockchain. Blockchain is just a long chain of transaction blocks for a crypto network.
Now in 2017, some Bitcoin developers and miners decided that Bitcoin wasn’t serving the purpose for which it was created – to serve as peer-to-peer electronic cash. The network wasn’t serving the purpose because of its slow nature as transactions continued to pile up.
This was caused by a number of things, first the block size of Bitcoin. The block size is the size of the block, that is its capacity to accommodate transactions. Because Bitcoin had a small block size of 10 mb, it couldn’t take on many transactions, so it takes too long for transactions to go through.
The argument was that a cryptocurrency to be used for payments should be fast, so they decided to create another “Bitcoin” that will effectively serve as electronic cash. They then created a fork of the Bitcoin blockchain and called it Bitcoin Cash.
While Bitcoin Cash actually came with features such as shorter block time and lower transaction fees, Bitcoin developers till this day do not believe that it is superior to Bitcoin in any way. They also believe that what bitcoin Cash developers believe to be weaknesses in Bitcoin are actually features designed to fortify the network.
What is Bitcoin SV
After creating Bitcoin Cash out of Bitcoin, another controversy arose among Bitcoin Cash developers. Some of them said that the scalability features of Bitcoin Cash were not sufficient to meet the requirements for the original Bitcoin.
They also wanted a Bitcoin that will operate in accordance with the original Bitcoin design as represented in version 0.1 of the Bitcoin protocol – the Satoshi Version. They therefore forked Bitcoin Cash again to create Bitcoin Satoshi Version (SV).
The idea behind Bitcoin SV is that no more improvement is required for Bitcoin other than increasing its block size. Bitcoin Cash had however made a few additional changes including reducing the amount of data required to confirm transactions, which Bitcoin SV developers believe was detrimental to the original Bitcoin design.
Bitcoin SV was therefore created, led by an Australian mathematician Craig Wright who till today claims to be Satoshi Nakamoto, the unknown person who first designed Bitcoin. This has raised a lot of arguments in the crypto space on whether he is actually Satoshi or not.
The two cryptocurrencies have been running since and still available on the crypto market, but they are referred to as altcoins, i.e alternative coins to Bitcoin. Interestingly, both Bitcoin Cash and Bitcoin SV have suffered 51% attacks – an attack on the network by a group of miners controlling the majority of its hash rate.
This has been effectively prevented in Bitcoin, even though it is the oldest crypto network, giving credence to the claim that what Bitcoin Cash and Bitcoin SV tried to fix were features rather than bugs.
Final thoughts
Hopefully now you know the difference between bitcoin Cash and Bitcoin SV, and also how they came about. You should also be able to distinguish them from the main Bitcoin which remains the biggest cryptocurrency by market cap and also the most popular cryptocurrency in the world.
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