On 1 August 2017, at Bitcoin block 478,559, a subset of miners produced a block larger than the 1 MB limit. That block split the chain, and Bitcoin Cash (BCH) was born. Everyone holding BTC at the fork height received an equal BCH balance. Nine years later BCH is still a working SHA-256 proof-of-work network with its own yearly upgrade cadence, a native token layer, and a roadmap that now includes quantum-resistance groundwork. This guide is Part 3 of the Litecoin & Forks series; Part 1 covered Litecoin's Scrypt fork and Part 2 covered Dogecoin's merge-mined path.

What Bitcoin Cash is

Bitcoin Cash is a chain-split of Bitcoin itself, not a separate codebase written from scratch. Up to block 478,558 the two histories are identical — same UTXO set, same difficulty, same coin supply. From block 478,559 they diverged.

The split followed years of argument about how Bitcoin should scale. Through 2016 and early 2017, the 1 MB block cap produced mempool congestion and double-digit-dollar fees during peaks. One camp, associated with Bitcoin Core and names like Blockstream, favoured keeping blocks small and scaling off-chain through SegWit and Lightning. Another camp — led by Roger Ver, Bitmain, and a range of merchant-adoption advocates — wanted larger on-chain blocks so the base layer itself could handle retail-style payments. When the compromise known as SegWit2x collapsed, the large-block camp forked.

BCH launched with an 8 MB maximum block size. The May 2018 upgrade raised the default to 32 MB, where it still sits. Unlike Litecoin, which was a 2011 pre-fork of Bitcoin's codebase, or Dogecoin, which forked from Litecoin, Bitcoin Cash inherited Bitcoin's live ledger state. That inheritance is also why BCH kept the 21 million supply cap and the halving schedule.

How the chain works

At consensus level BCH looks almost identical to Bitcoin. It uses SHA-256 proof-of-work, targets a 10-minute block time, and uses the UTXO model for balances. Because the hashing algorithm is shared, the same ASIC rigs can mine either chain, and miners rotate between them based on price and difficulty.

The important technical differences are three:

Block size. The default maximum block is 32 MB, roughly 32x Bitcoin's legacy 1 MB base limit. In practice most BCH blocks are well under 1 MB because demand for blockspace is low, so users see near-zero fees.
Difficulty adjustment. Since 15 November 2020, BCH has used ASERT (aserti3-2d) — Absolutely Scheduled Exponentially Rising Targets. It has a 172,800-second (two-day) halflife and adjusts every block rather than every 2,016 blocks. ASERT replaced an earlier moving-average algorithm (cw-144) whose oscillations were exploitable by mercenary hashrate. This matters for BCH because its smaller security budget makes hashrate swings more dramatic than on Bitcoin.
No SegWit, no canonical Lightning. BCH never activated SegWit and has no Bitcoin-style Lightning Network. Scaling is on-chain by design. The contrast with Bitcoin's SegWit and blockspace economics is the cleanest way to see the philosophical split.

Addresses use the CashAddr format with a bitcoincash: prefix — a bech32-like encoding chosen specifically to make BCH addresses visually distinct from BTC addresses. Legacy base58 addresses still validate at the protocol level, but CashAddr is the standard because it is the best guardrail against accidental cross-sends.

Token economics

BCH inherited Bitcoin's issuance curve exactly. The hard cap is 21,000,000 BCH. New coins are issued as a block subsidy that halves every 210,000 blocks — roughly every four years — and that schedule is locked to the same block heights Bitcoin hits.

The subsidy milestones so far:

August 2017 (fork): 12.5 BCH per block
April 2020: halved to 6.25 BCH
4 April 2024 (block 1,050,000): halved to 3.125 BCH
~2028 (projected): next halving to 1.5625 BCH

Around the April 2024 halving, BCH hashrate dropped from roughly 3.6 EH/s to about 1.5 EH/s as SHA-256 miners chased better BTC economics. ASERT's per-block retargeting is the reason the chain kept producing blocks on cadence through the transition rather than stalling for days. Bitcoin's halving schedule is the longer read on why this cadence exists in the first place.

Ecosystem: splits, CashTokens, and the CHIP cadence

BCH has forked twice since 2017, and both times it is the name "Bitcoin Cash" and the BCH ticker that stayed with the surviving chain. The splinters are separate networks with separate prices:

15 November 2018 — Bitcoin SV (BSV) split. Driven by nChain and Craig Wright over block-size and scripting direction. BSV is a distinct chain and is not part of the BCH lineage.
15 November 2020 — BCHN vs Bitcoin ABC split. Bitcoin ABC proposed the Infrastructure Funding Proposal (IFP), redirecting 8% of the coinbase reward to an ABC development address. Bitcoin Cash Node (BCHN) rejected the IFP. Roughly 80% of hashpower followed BCHN, which kept the BCH ticker. ABC's chain rebranded as eCash (XEC) and today trades under a different ticker with very different fundamentals.

The practical takeaway: BCH, BSV, and XEC are not the same asset. Sending to the wrong chain is a real user-safety failure mode — check the ticker and the address prefix before any transfer.

Since the 2020 split BCHN has been the dominant full-node implementation. BCH has no central foundation; upgrades are proposed, debated, and signalled through the Cash Improvement Proposal (CHIP) process, with activation locked to a yearly 15 May window:

15 May 2023 — CashTokens (CHIP-2022-02) activated. BCH gained native fungible and non-fungible tokens at the UTXO layer, without the OP_RETURN-metadata workarounds older standards like SLP relied on. CashScript is the high-level language that compiles to Bitcoin Cash Script.
15 May 2025 — BCHN v28.0.0 shipped CHIP-2021-05 VM Limits and CHIP-2024-07 BigInt, lifting integer width up to 80,000 bits and expanding what on-chain contracts can compute.
15 May 2026 (scheduled) — BCHN v29.0.0, codenamed "Layla," is planned to ship four CHIPs including Loops and Functions. This upgrade is scheduled, not active; activation depends on miner and exchange readiness.

CashTokens activity has grown since 2023 but on-chain DeFi liquidity on BCH remains small compared to EVM chains. Merchant tooling — BitPay, CashAddr-aware POS apps — is mature, though day-to-day payment volume is still a fraction of Bitcoin's.

How to hold BCH in Zelcore

Bitcoin Cash is a first-class native chain in Zelcore on desktop, mobile, and browser. It is not a wrapped token or a bridged asset — Zelcore signs and broadcasts real BCH transactions.

A few practical notes:

CashAddr by default. Receive addresses display with the bitcoincash: prefix. Legacy base58 addresses still validate, but the CashAddr prefix is your clearest guardrail against cross-sending BCH to a BTC address (or the reverse).
Own explorer infrastructure. Zelcore runs a Blockbook instance at blockbook.bch.zelcore.io, so balance and history lookups resolve against Zelcore-operated infrastructure rather than third-party APIs.
Hardware-wallet pairing. Ledger and Trezor both sign BCH transactions on-device; Zelcore handles UTXO selection and broadcast while private keys stay on the hardware wallet.
Ticker check. Before any deposit or withdrawal, confirm the ticker is BCH — not BSV, not XEC. All three share history but none of them share chains.

Self-custody of BCH works the same way self-custody works for Bitcoin: the seed phrase derives the keys, the keys sign the transactions, and Zelcore gives you the UI and the explorer data.

Key risks and recent events

Shared-algorithm hashrate risk. Because BCH and BTC both use SHA-256, a short-term 51% attack on BCH is cheaper than on BTC — you can rent hashrate that already exists. ASERT mitigates the worst version of this by letting difficulty recover quickly, and exchanges typically require 10 or more confirmations on BCH deposits for the same reason.

Ticker and chain confusion. BCH (this guide), BSV (the 2018 split), and XEC / eCash (the 2020 ABC split) are three different networks with three different prices. Wallets, exchanges, and block explorers treat them separately. Do not assume any of them map 1:1 to each other.

Upgrade coordination. The 15 May cadence works only if miners, exchanges, and wallet providers update on time. Since 2021 these upgrades have been smooth, but users should update Zelcore and any other wallet software before each May upgrade to avoid being stuck on the old consensus rules.

Adoption ceiling. Merchant tooling exists and works, but on-chain BCH payment volume is a small fraction of BTC's. CashTokens brought meaningful token activity, but DeFi liquidity on BCH is still modest.

Key takeaways

Bitcoin Cash hard-forked from Bitcoin on 1 August 2017 at block 478,559 and inherited the full UTXO state, the 21M cap, and the halving schedule.
BCH uses SHA-256 proof-of-work with a 32 MB default block cap and a per-block ASERT difficulty adjustment since November 2020 — no SegWit, no canonical Lightning.
Upgrades ship on a yearly 15 May cadence through the CHIP process. CashTokens activated in 2023; the Layla upgrade is scheduled for 15 May 2026.
BCH, BSV, and XEC are three different chains with three different prices. The CashAddr bitcoincash: prefix is the clearest guardrail against cross-sends.
Zelcore supports BCH natively across desktop, mobile, and browser, with its own Blockbook explorer and hardware-wallet pairing.