It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way — in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only. — “A tale of two cities by Charles Dickens”
Nobody could have summed up my thoughts on 2017 any better than Charles Dickens. It was the year where the totality of eventualities that unfolded were absolutely unpredictable at the outset of the year. I have a feeling 2018 will be no different in that respect.
I decided to write this piece to establish the key differences, IMHO, between Bitcoin & Bitcoin Cash. This post is written with the intention of being neutral, and has been reviewed by supporters from both sides, who believe it is a reasonably fair representation of the arguments from each camp.
In early 2017, I expressed my concerns that a fast rising tide in the crypto world would result in another Bitcoin Bubble (which just means perennial overvaluations with subsequent bear markets, as has happened on 3 prior occasions to Bitcoin — it does not mean Bitcoin will die!). At the time of writing, the Bitcoin price has peaked to just below $20k in early December 2017 with a subsequent low of around $12k — and is now hovering around $13k. Not quite a bubble burst, but seems to be a correction in the making. That being said, this is still a pretty healthy state of consolidation for Bitcoin and my worst fears around unhealthy exuberance appears to be have been overcome with overall general positivity for Bitcoin by a fast growing global crypto enthused community.
The other major concern that I had written about did actually happen: Bitcoin forked into two major forks — Bitcoin & Bitcoin Cash. The success of the Bitcoin Cash fork, which resulted in a new coin being valued at around $10bn at the time of the fork (and now over $40bn), encouraged others to fork, and as a result, we have Bitcoin Gold, Bitcoin Diamond, etc. I went publicly bearish on Bitcoin earlier in 2017 because I truly believed that the market couldn’t sustain high transaction fees as a result of a higher Bitcoin price, if scaling was not resolved — but the viewpoint amongst Bitcoin supporters changed somewhat and it is now being seen as “Digital Gold” or a “Store of Value” — and not as a digital currency with low transaction fees.
When Bitcoin Cash forked out of Bitcoin, if you were holding Bitcoin — you would receive 1 Bitcoin Cash for every 1 Bitcoin you owned. The key difference is that each fork has a different set of miners and developers working on taking it in whatever direction they deem is best, with support from their respective communities. The key here is that no-one loses — you can hold both coins and see which fork of the chain becomes the best or most widely adopted. If you buy a coin after the fork, you risk that the other fork(s) wins out. For this reasons, I highly recommend that people do not sell their forked coins until we can see how all these forks play out . I believe you should maintain at least 1 Bitcoin Cash for each Bitcoin that you own, for example.