Bitcoin Cash BCH

Split off from Bitcoin in 2017 after years of argument about block size. Those behind the split held that the network should carry more transactions directly rather than push them into overlay layers — so they raised the block limit and carried on the same chain, sharing all history up to the fork. Existing holders received equal balances on both sides.

The rest of the economics is inherited unchanged: proof of work on the same algorithm, a block roughly every ten minutes, a 21 million cap and halvings on the same schedule. Because the algorithm is shared, both chains compete for the same mining hardware, and security here is markedly thinner. A year later a further chain split away from Bitcoin Cash itself — the argument over rules repeated inside the project.

The product idea has not moved: a cheap on-chain payment, without a second layer and without heavy computation.

Sharing Bitcoin's mining algorithm means hardware can switch between the chains, and the smaller one is secured only by whatever share of that power it attracts.