Bitcoin Cash was the first Bitcoin fork and started a chain of Bitcoin forks including Bitcoin SegWit2x (Now canceled), Bitcoin Gold, Bitcoin Diamond and many more. Now that Bitcoin Cash has been added to Coinbase, the largest USD to Bitcoin exchange, it is time to talk about the good and the bad before people buy in.

T he Good

Faster Transactions and Lower Transaction Fees

I believe Bitcoin Cash currently embodies Satoshi Nakamoto’s original vision for Bitcoin, a currency used for commerce, not as a store of value. Imagine paying 33$ for a 3$ cup of coffee, it currently costs around 30$ per transaction on the Bitcoin network. Also, imagine waiting 2 hours to pay for that same coffee, 137 minutes is the average confirmation time for a Bitcoin transaction. Bitcoin Cash averages a 33¢ transaction fee, 1/90th of the current Bitcoin transaction fee. The average transaction time is about 30 minutes, leaps and bounds faster than Bitcoin but not 100% practical for simple purchases such as a cup of coffee. Closer to Satoshi’s vision but not quite.

Larger Block Sizes

Bitcoin Cash currently has 8mb blocks (without SegWit) versus the 1mb blocks (with SegWit). Bitcoin Cash effectively has double (not octuple because of SegWit) the block size of Bitcoin with 8mb blocks allowing for many more transactions to happen every block. Many people have spoken out about larger blocks, arguing that it would be demanding on storage and many people wouldn’t be able to store the whole blockchain but it is a moot point thanks to how cheap storage is in this day and age. As far as we know Bitcoin Cash is planning to implement even larger blocks if the need becomes apparent, they have tested 1gb blocks on the testnet and the future is bright for Bitcoin Cash’s scaling.

Community

Bitcoin Cash’s community (R/BTC) is one free of censorship and majority of the posts are focused discussions relating to the coin, on the other hand, Bitcoin’s community (R/Bitcoin) can often be found full of memes and has a history for censoring posts they don’t like.The community is one of the most important things for the growth of a coin and makes the newcomer’s experience less frustrating. I know there are many other places where people talk about Bitcoin and Bitcoin Cash but Reddit is one of the most popular places for newcomers to ask questions and view information about the coin.

The Bad

Node Centralization

About half of the Bitcoin Cash nodes are located on virtual servers owned by Alibaba in China. Alibaba is a company backed by the Chinese government and at any point, China could force Alibaba to hijack the Bitcoin Cash network and Bitcoin Cash’s network’s reliability would plummet. Until people set up more nodes in other parts of the world people are putting a lot of faith in the Chinese government and hoping they don’t ruin this coin.

Lack of Publicity

Bitcoin has been creating headlines nonstop for the past month but Bitcoin Cash hasn’t consistently made headlines since the original fork date. Many average people who are just getting into cryptocurrency almost automatically choose to buy Bitcoin and rarely any of them know about Bitcoin Cash, this lack of publicity is preventing Bitcoin Cash from becoming mainstream and potentially allowing it to overtake Bitcoin.

Lack of Trading Pairs

On every single exchange, you will find Bitcoin->Altcoin trading pairs and Ethereum->Altcoin trading pairs but no high volume exchanges have Bitcoin Cash->Altcoin trading pairs. This is preventing a lot of investors from buying Bitcoin Cash on Coinbase and using it to buy other coins on exchanges such as Bittrex and Kraken. Bitcoin Cash trading pairs on high volume exchanges are almost 100% integral to the coin’s growth as a tool used for commerce.

Conclusion

Bitcoin Cash is definitely not a perfect coin and won’t overtake Bitcoin in the near future but it has a good use case and embodies Satoshi’s original vision. If Bitcoin Cash can get more publicity and more real-world use cases such as buying a burger at McDonalds or booking a hotel room for the weekend it will have the potential to be an everyday currency and a household name. These are just my opinions and research, remember not to put all your faith in strangers on the internet and remember to do your own research before investing.