What is Bitcoin Cash?

The creation of bitcoin cash

Bitcoin is a revolutionary form of digital money that functions without a central authority. A network of computers running the Bitcoin protocol (software) maintain a record of transactions (people sending/spending bitcoin) across what is known as the blockchain - literally a chain of digital blocks of data - that stores transaction history of the currency units of bitcoin (the currency).

Bitcoin block size was originally set at 1MB to lower the possibility of spam and other cyber attacks, but as the currency grew in popularity, blocks started to fill up and users were reported to be waiting up to four days to have their transactions confirmed causing one a major crisis within the community.

When sending bitcoin, users pay a small fee which can be increased to guarantee faster confirmation of their transactions. The idea of paying more became a growing point of contention especially for making micro-transactions which was supposed to be one of the cornerstones of bitcoin.

Think of it this way: would you be inclined to buy a $10 item with bitcoin if the transaction fees on it were over $15?

There was plenty of debate in the crypto community as to how to solve the problem, but ultimately it ended in divorce, and what is known as the ‘forking’ of bitcoin - on August 1st, 2017 - to spawn a new protocol and currency which attempted to solve the problem - step forward bitcoin cash. (more about the fork here and how Cloudbet became the first bitcoin sportsbook and casino to award fork funds to their customers).

Cloudbet introduced bitcoin cash for betting, deposits and withdrawals on April 6th, 2018 to provide our customers with an alternative to bitcoin.

Cloudbet introduced bitcoin cash for betting, deposits and withdrawals on April 6th, 2018 to provide our customers with an alternative to bitcoin.

What’s so great about bitcoin cash?

Bitcoin cash was created to have a block size limit of 8 mb allowing more transactions to be processed in one block, facilitating more transactions faster and for lower fees. The cryptocurrency continues to grow in popularity and currently sits 4th on the list of most popular cryptocurrencies by market capitalisation.

Note: bitcoin cash is a completely independent cryptocurrency, so its price is not dependant on that of the original bitcoin.

Cloudbet introduced bitcoin cash for betting, deposits and withdrawals on April 6th, 2018 to provide our customers with an alternative to bitcoin. bitcoin cash is essentially a child of bitcoin so shares many of the characteristics that make it ideal for betting along with unique characteristics of its own:

Accessibility

bitcoin cash (and bitcoin) is available to anyone with an internet connection. Since the currency is not tied to interest or exchange rates, it can also easily be used on an international level.

Privacy

As with other cryptocurrencies, bitcoin cash is free of all governmental oversight. You’ll always be in control of your cash and your bank or other large corporations like PayPal will no longer have the power to monitor or freeze your accounts without your consent.

Low Fees

One of the primary selling points for bitcoin cash is that transactions are very cheap and very and fast; this makes it especially attractive for smaller transactions and perfectly suited for betting.

The bitcoin cash debate

The beauty of Bitcoin is that it has no central control. Anyone can participate in the process of creating a consensus across its blockchain of transactions. But equally, anyone that feels that the rules that govern its currency - bitcoin with a small b - can decide to create a different set of rules. This is essentially what happened with bitcoin cash, except that difference of opinion is not a minor dispute but a widening chasm in the crypto community - a crypto West Side Story. This battle will eventually be decided by the democracy of the system; the more people that transact in either currency, the greater its position and dominance.

Though we are invested in the future of cryptocurrency as a whole, Cloudbet have no position on the politics of that debate, but we’ll continue to offer the choice of both bitcoin cash betting and bitcoin betting to our customers and follow the discussion with interest.

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