Bitcoin Cash (BCH)

16/04/2026

Bitcoin Cash (BCH) is a cryptocurrency that forked from Bitcoin in August 2017. The fork was driven by a scaling debate — Bitcoin Cash increased the block size limit to allow more transactions per block and lower fees.

Key facts

Algorithm: SHA-256
Block time: ~10 minutes
Max supply: 21,000,000 BCH
Mining hardware: ASIC (same as Bitcoin)
Fork date: August 1, 2017 (at block 478,558)

Relationship to Bitcoin

BCH shares Bitcoin's history up to the fork block — every Bitcoin holder received an equal amount of BCH at the time of the split. After that, the two chains developed independently.

BCH can be mined with the same ASIC hardware as Bitcoin (SHA-256), but the two networks have independent difficulty adjustments and separate mining economies.