Bitcoin Cash: The Contender Arises

Bitcoin Cash's development team views it as both the original Bitcoin and the successor to Bitcoin currently sitting at the premiere price point in the cryptocurrency market. Bitcoin Cash is a fork of the so-called main Bitcoin, although it retains the original source code. So, it's kind of a semantic argument as to which Bitcoin is really the fork and which is the Satoshi Nakamoto original. In any event, Bitcoin Cash became a separate entity at block 478558, which miners reached on Aug. 1, 2017. When the coin forked, all Bitcoin holders simultaneously became holders of Bitcoin Cash.

Since the coin's fork, the project has struggled for both legitimacy and pricing power relative to its more prominent cousin. We're going to take a quick overview of what Bitcoin Cash is, what it's done in the pricing arena thus far, and where the BCH to USD price will go next.

Birth of Bitcoin Cash

Bitcoin Cash's original team forked from the main Bitcoin project due to the controversy over how to handle block sizes. Bitcoin started life with a 1 MB block size. This forced the coin to hit an "invisible wall," as the Bitcoin Cash development team described. Bitcoin fees jumped to unacceptable levels. Concurrently, the coin became less reliable as transaction confirmation times stretched to several days.

It's important to note here that there isn't one coherent Bitcoin Cash development team, but there is a website that serves as the flagship for the currency.

Bitcoin's price spiked in 2017, but its usefulness reached an important threshold. As a result, Bitcoin's market share fell from 95 percent of the cryptocurrency market to perhaps as low as 40 percent.
The prime difference between Bitcoin and Bitcoin Cash involves something called Segregated Witness. Segregated Witness, or SegWit, created a divide in the Bitcoin community when developers proposed it as a solution to the Bitcoin block size problem. The main drawback of SegWit is its creation of discardable signatures, a potential security vulnerability. This provided the main reason for the split. Bitcoin used SegWit to raise its block size to 1.7 MB. Bitcoin Cash altered the code to initially increase its block size to 8 MB, but eventually upgraded to 32 MB .

Bitcoin Cash Pricing, Thus Far

According to CoinMarketCap, Bitcoin Cash's initial price was about $550, or 20 percent of the Bitcoin price at that time. The relationship between the price of Bitcoin Cash relative to the U.S. dollar and Bitcoin squirmed in the turbulent December-January period. Bitcoin Cash's price skyrocketed during the December bull market to about $1,943, or 34 percent of the Bitcoin price, and continued to grow to more than $4,000 while sinking to just 24 percent of the Bitcoin price. Following the general January cryptocurrency crash, Bitcoin Cash's price relative to Bitcoin settled into a 14 percent holding pattern, where it generally hovers.

Bitcoin Cash Price Predictions

Bitcoin Cash suffers from a public relations problem due to its ongoing and very public fight with the mainstream Bitcoin community. As a result, it's difficult to find unbiased information regarding price predictions. Online forum users tend to quickly take sides in the Bitcoin versus Bitcoin Cash debate, with a healthy dollop of fear, uncertainty, and disinformation – the dreaded FUD – appearing on either side.

Some clear Bitcoin proponents view Bitcoin Cash as a sideshow and a small boon – to be immediately converted back to Bitcoin and point at the involvement of Roger Ver and Craig Wright. Wright has famously claimed to be Bitcoin creator Satoshi Nakamoto, a claim that has drawn intense skepticism from the Bitcoin community.
On the other hand, Bitcoin Cash supporters view their project's inevitable eclipsing of Bitcoin as a simple math problem. Bitcoin Cash, the supporters argue, is faster with lower transaction fees. By sheer weight of usage, they say, Bitcoin Cash should eventually surpass Bitcoin as p2p electronic cash.

Last Crypto Standing

The cryptocurrency ecosystem currently has at least 1,600 projects. Cryptocurrencies range from heavily centralized, like Ripple, to almost completely decentralized, like Komodo. Some coins aren't currencies at all, functioning instead as tokenized real-world assets. Use cases range from voting to art collecting to the Internet of Things to health insurance.
Surely, in this wide and wonderful cryptocurrency world, there's room for both Bitcoin and Bitcoin Cash?
Not so far, say backers on both sides of the aisle. Both coins lay claim to the Bitcoin legacy and even the Bitcoin logo. They are both aiming to fill the same market niche. Though some Bitcoin payment outlets will also currently accept Bitcoin Cash, the gulf in acceptance between the two is growing, and they are not cross-compatible.
Ultimately, market watchers say, one coin will necessarily have to triumph over the other. And that's before taking into account the 30 or so additional Bitcoin forks circulating in the wild, all with more or less of a claim to the Bitcoin crown.
The only safe bet at the moment is that both Bitcoin and Bitcoin Cash will track with the general market. This is due to Bitcoin's status as the cryptocurrency market leader and Bitcoin Cash's tendency to move along with Bitcoin in price, absent some majorly odd market condition, like the surprise December bull run. A breakout maneuver for Bitcoin Cash could be in the works, in terms of a major adoption or a major misstep by the mainstream Bitcoin community, but until it actually appears, it seems as if the Bitcoin/Bitcoin Cash feud will continue to be a stalemate.