A lot of the hype in the cryptocurrency world is around Bitcoin, which is no surprise since BTC is by far the most valuable token. However, we shouldn’t forget that there have been several hard forks, with various developers looking to create what they believed would be the most authentic and useful version of this digital currency.
Bitcoin Cash
In 2017, the controversial SegWit upgrade divided opinion among the Bitcoin community, with some feeling that it would make BTC purely an investment rather than a useful everyday currency. As a result, Bitcoin Cash (BCH) was released the same year, allowing larger block sizes as a way of processing a greater number of transactions every second.
As the new currency entered the market, holders of the original Bitcoin received one BCH token for each BTC held. Both tokens have operated separately since then and, at the time of writing, BCH is 19th in the list of the largest cryptocurrencies, with a market capitalization of $8.44 billion. As the original BTC has been more frequently described as a store of value lately, BCH has proven that there is room in the market for a faster and more scalable version that can be used for everyday transactions.
Bitcoin SV
The next dramatic hard fork occurred just a year later, as Bitcoin Cash was the subject of internal division. The block size was one of the most important issues as one of the factions created Bitcoin Satoshi Vision (BSV) through a hard fork. This group gave BSV an increased block size of 128 MB in an attempt to follow what they believe was Satoshi Nakamoto’s original idea. It was reported by CoinGeek recently that BSV has now processed six billion transactions, with the upcoming Teranode era set to give it arguably the most impressive blockchain scalability solution.
The token’s usefulness for processing fast, accurate transactions has seen it accepted by various commercial sites such as PeerGame. This online casino confirms that BSV meets their aims of giving a fast and user-friendly banking solution with low fees. Given the importance of security in the casino industry, they also highlight the stable protocol as added advantages.
Source: Pexels
Other Versions
We need to go back to 2014 to find the first major Bitcoin hard fork, as Bitcoin XT was created to include new features to allow 24 transactions each second by increasing the block size. However, the project was abandoned in 2018.
2016’s Bitcoin Classic (BXC) and Bitcoin Unlimited (BTCU) failed to gain widespread adoption while Bitcoin Gold (BTG) was created thanks to a 2017 hard fork. BTG makes it easier for people to mine tokens using standard graphics cards rather than specialist equipment. It’s currently in 277th place on the cryptos list, with a market cap of $227 million.
It’s fascinating to see how some of the Bitcoin hard forks have gone from strength to strength while others have struggled to make an impact. As BTC continues to dominate the crypto headlines, we shouldn’t overlook these alternative versions that have earned unique places in the market.
