by Josh Biggs in Finance on 17th February 2019
Bitcoin Cash is the most successful fork of Bitcoin, which was created to solve scalability issues that the original chain was suffering from. To achieve its goal of becoming a sound method of payment, Bitcoin Cash increased the block size and announced the plans to improve zero-confirmation transactions. It was a sure move towards mass adoption that so many cryptocurrencies are struggling to get.
However, by a twist of fate, Bitcoin Cash has recently fallen victim to a hard fork itself, giving birth to a new coin called Bitcoin SV. This fork has brought much ideological debate and pushed the community to the edge of a ‘civil war’.
So, what’s going on with Bitcoin Cash now? Has it lost its attractiveness to investors? Let’s find out where it stands now and whether you should buy Bitcoin Cash . What’s all the fuss about?
Bitcoin Cash entered the cryptocurrency scene over a year ago, and since then has been gaining traction rapidly.
With a large block size of 32MB, BCH allows for fast transaction processing and thus prevents the blockchain from getting congested at peak times.
To prove it, Bitcoin Cash has even undergone a stress test that has shown its ability to handle over 2 million minimum-fee transactions in a day. It has been considered a significant improvement over Bitcoin and many altcoins, as well as an important reason for merchants and businesses to start considering Bitcoin Cash a viable payment option. Although BCH is highly flexible and ready to adapt to customers’ needs, it is not as demanded as BTC, though. To gain a much wider audience and merchant support, the network needs to offer much more than that.
Paving the way for the cryptocurrency improvement, the developer community has come up with a few minor upgrades that might help Bitcoin Cash function in tune with market trends and users’ demands. Among the proposed improvements were the use of cross-chain atomic contracts and the implementation of canonical transaction ordering.
As is usually the case, not all developers happened to be on the same page and share the same philosophy on how Bitcoin Cash should progress. As a result, the hard fork occurred giving the way to a new coin – Bitcoin SV.
The team behind it claims that with the launch of BSV they aim to restore Satoshi Nakamoto’s true vision of the original Bitcoin protocol.
As of today (December 3), Bitcoin Cash has cemented its position as the fifth largest cryptocurrency with the market cap of around $3 billion. Bitcoin SV is lagging behind and has occupied the ninth place in the list, boasting of only $1.6 billion in the total market value. Bitcoin Cash and cryptocurrency exchanges
Despite the fork, cryptocurrency exchanges offer a wide variety of options for buying Bitcoin Cash. Some of them provide only crypto/crypto pairs while others support crypto/fiat swaps as well.
Although many platforms are struggling to decide on the ticker for the initial chain (both BCH and BCHABC are used), the market seems more active for the original coin than for its spinoff. The stance on Bitcoin SV is still controversial among the exchanges, that’s why many of them are slow in enabling BSV trades.
According to Coinmarketcap, there are 45 exchanges that have listed BSV , and around 60 platforms that support BCH trading. As times goes by and both coins get through the ‘teething stage’, there should be more certainty about which cryptocurrency is going to take the lead. Where to buy Bitcoin Cash?
As mentioned above, the number of options for buying BCH is huge, so we decided to describe the easiest one. If you’re new to the crypto world or want to purchase Bitcoin Cash with fiat money, the fastest and probably the most reliable way would be to buy it using a credit card.
CEX.IO is among the pioneer exchanges that made credit card payments possible for purchasing Bitcoin Cash and other coins. As a licensed and legally compliant business, CEX.IO features a great level of security, including full data encryption and two-factor authentication.
According to the official website at https://cex.io/ , it markets itself as the cryptocurrency exchange that has never lost a single penny of their users’ funds. Another advantage of CEX.
IO is its global coverage – no other service can boast such a number of supported countries (99% of nations covered). Now that you know why we opt for CEX.IO, let’s have a look at the process of buying Bitcoin Cash here.
Once you have registered and verified your identity, you will be able to buy BCH with GBP, EUR, and USD.
To complete an exchange in just a few clicks, you need to navigate to the buy/sell section of the website – it is specifically designed for instant purchases. There you will be offered with three fixed options to buy Bitcoin Cash for $200, $500, and $1,000. You can opt for one of them or set the desired amount yourself.
When it comes to Bitcoin SV, CEX.IO states that they will grant the coins to the users who were holding BCH within the website at the moment of the fork, but they are not going to add the BSV (BCH SV) trading pairs. Where to buy Bitcoin SV?
Although not so widespread among the exchanges, BSV is still listed on several reputable platforms. The likes of Poloniex, Bitfinex, Bittrex, and Binance introduced BSV pairs almost right away. As most of them are crypto-to-crypto exchanges, you won’t be able to use fiat for buying Bitcoin SV there.
If you decide on Binance or Poloniex, you will be offered two options of trading BSV – against BTC and USDT (or USDC at Poloniex). Bittrex, on the other hand, has a wider range of pairs for Bitcoin SV. In addition to BTC and USDT markets, BSV will be available for trading against ETH. Bitfinex is the only exchange among the four that allows for buying Bitcoin SV with fiat – namely, USD.
To sum it up
It is still unclear how this fork will eventually influence Bitcoin Cash acceptance or value and whether it will manage to consolidate its position among the top five largest cryptocurrencies. As long as Bitcoin Cash allows for fast and smooth transactions, as well as outperforms other cryptos in technological improvements, it will likely be in demand.
However, you are the only person who is in charge of your hard-earned money, and it is up to you to decide whether it is worth investing in either Bitcoin Cash or Bitcoin SV. If you are still hesitating, spend some time researching and learning about the pros and cons of each – this will certainly help you make an informed decision.
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