In 2017, Bitcoin spawned a new cryptocurrency to support higher transaction volume than Bitcoin. Created as a "hard fork," the Bitcoin Cash block size is 8MB compared with Bitcoin's 1MB. On August 1, 2017, Bitcoin holders received one unit of Bitcoin Cash (BCH) for every Bitcoin they owned, and BCH rose to nearly $700 the next day. Very volatile, within two weeks, it dropped to $300 only to quadruple later in the year. By the end of 2018, Bitcoin Cash was around $200 and more than $500 in early 2021. See
Bitcoin hard fork.
The Original Bitcoin Was Also Improved
A week after Bitcoin Cash debuted, a consortium of Bitcoin miners approved the Segregated Witness upgrade that made the original Bitcoin more efficient (see
SegWit). Both Bitcoin and Bitcoin Cash have had wild rides.
Two Bitcoin Cash Hard Forks
In 2017 and 2020, there were two hard forks of Bitcoin Cash. One was made to expand block size (see
Bitcoin SV), and the other to pay some of the block reward to fund development (see
Bitcoin ABC).