What is Bitcoin Cash (BCH)?
Bitcoin Cash (BCH) split from Bitcoin on 1 August 2017 after a long debate over how to scale the network. Its supporters wanted Bitcoin to grow on-chain as everyday electronic cash rather than as a settlement layer, so the new chain kept Bitcoin's history up to the split and then took its own path toward bigger blocks and low fees.
- Type
- Payment-focused layer-1 cryptocurrency
- Launched
- 2017
- Consensus
- Proof of Work (SHA-256)
- Max supply
- 21 million BCH
- Swap network
- Bitcoin Cash
How Bitcoin Cash works
BCH is mined with SHA-256 Proof of Work and targets one block every ten minutes, like Bitcoin. Since May 2024 an adaptive algorithm sets the block size limit according to demand, and network upgrades on 15 May each year have added native tokens (CashTokens, 2023), high-precision arithmetic (2025) and loops and functions for smart contracts (2026).
What BCH is used for
BCH is used for peer-to-peer payments and merchant checkouts, where a typical network fee of less than a cent matters. CashTokens also let developers issue fungible tokens and NFTs directly on the chain.
BCH supply
Bitcoin Cash keeps Bitcoin's monetary rules: issuance is capped at 21 million BCH, and the block reward halves every 210,000 blocks, roughly every four years.
Before you swap BCH
Bitcoin Cash addresses come in the CashAddr format (bitcoincash:q... or p...) and in a legacy format starting with 1 or 3 that looks exactly like a Bitcoin address, so make sure the destination is a BCH wallet before withdrawing. Blocks arrive about every ten minutes, so allow some time for a deposit to confirm.