First published 19 April 2020. Expanded in October 2026 so the later splits, CashAddr, and CashTokens sit on the same page as the 2017 fork. Bitcoin Cash is a proof-of-work chain that split from Bitcoin on 1 August 2017. The argument was about block size. One side wanted more transactions in each block, on the chain itself. The other wanted small blocks and other layers for scale. Both kept running. BCH is the larger-block chain. BTC is the chain that kept the name Bitcoin and the small-block design. They share a history up to the split. They do not share a ticker, a price, or a wallet balance.
If you held bitcoin in your own keys at that block, you had a claim on both tapes. If an exchange held them, the exchange decided whether to credit BCH, and when. That was a company choice sitting on top of a protocol fact. What is Bitcoin, in plain language is the chain that did not leave. This page is the one that did.
What actually forked
The last common history is the Bitcoin chain before the split. Bitcoin Cash began by allowing blocks up to 8 MB, against Bitcoin’s 1 MB base. In May 2018 the cap on Bitcoin Cash went to 32 MB. The aim was room: more ordinary payments per block, with fees that stay low when the chain is not full. Room is not the same as use. Empty space in a block does not create demand, and a low fee on a quiet chain is a fact about traffic, not a moral victory.
The machinery underneath is still Bitcoin-shaped. SHA-256 proof of work. A target of about ten minutes a block. A cap of 21 million coins. A subsidy that halves on a block-height schedule inherited from the code. In 2024 that subsidy fell to 3.125 BCH. Miners can point SHA-256 machines at Bitcoin or at Bitcoin Cash. They pick the revenue. They do not merge the ledgers by doing so.
Addresses are the everyday trap. Bitcoin Cash uses CashAddr, often written bitcoincash:q… or simply q…. A legacy address can look like a Bitcoin address because the chains were once the same. A wallet that “just works” for both will still send onto the network you selected. Send BCH to a Bitcoin deposit, or BTC to a Bitcoin Cash deposit, and you have used the right-looking string in the wrong city. The wrong network is still the wrong city. Read the network badge out loud before the amount is serious.
The chain split again
On 15 November 2018 Bitcoin Cash itself split. One side kept the BCH ticker on exchanges. The other became Bitcoin SV. Bitcoin Cash and Bitcoin SV split. Tickers are not the same asset. is that week, written as news. What is Bitcoin SV (BSV)? is the other coin. Bitcoin did not fork that afternoon. Two tapes, two tickers, and a hash war that ended with both chains still producing blocks.
On 15 November 2020 it split again. Exchanges followed the Bitcoin Cash Node software and kept calling that coin BCH. The other side’s coin was later renamed eCash, ticker XEC, and redenominated so that one old unit became a million new ones. A balance that “gained zeros” that year was a rename and a split, not a yield. BCH, BSV, XEC, and BTC are four assets. A wallet that shows two of them has not made them interchangeable.
Tokens on Bitcoin Cash are not BCH
In May 2023 Bitcoin Cash activated CashTokens. The chain can now carry other assets and simple covenants beside the native coin. A token on Bitcoin Cash is an entry with its own rules. It is not BCH, even when it sits in the same wallet and the fee is paid in BCH. The same lesson as an Ethereum token: the icon is not the native coin. Match what the receiver asked for.
What to keep straight
BCH is not the real Bitcoin by slogan, and BTC is not the real Bitcoin Cash. “Real” is a community word. The engineering words are: which chain, which block-size rule, which address format, which exchange ticker. Proof of work does not make them one coin. A larger block does not make Bitcoin Cash a company, a stablecoin, or a helpdesk.
If you hold keys from before a split and you have never touched the other tape, those coins may still be there, and moving them badly can replay a transaction onto a chain you did not mean. That is a specialist problem. It is not a reason to type a seed phrase into a website that offers to “split your coins for you.” Nothing here is an instruction to buy, sell, or claim BCH.
