The History Of Bitcoin Forks

The Bitcoin movement has been praised by many people for introducing the idea of decentralization and blockchain technology. When one Bitcoin was only worth $100 or less, many people ignored it and they assumed it was just a scam or part of a Ponzi scheme.

However, as Bitcoin gets matured and the price keeps going higher, many people who brushed it off started to see it as a currency that deserves a second look. And yes, many people “missed the boat” and chose to ignore BTC even though its price has been going up.

Many of these people now try to find an alternative Bitcoin, something that’s still cheap in terms of price and market cap. They want to try to maximize their return by aiming for altcoins. And fortunately, there are many altcoins with the name “Bitcoin-something”, such as Bitcoin Cash, Bitcoin SV, or Bitcoin Gold. But, do you know that they were started as forks of the original Bitcoin itself? Well, we can try to learn more about their history with this article!

Bitcoin Cash (BCH)

The most popular Bitcoin fork is definitely Bitcoin Cash (BCH). Created in August 2017, Bitcoin Cash quickly rose to the top of crypto rankings by market cap due to the number of big supporters it has. Compared to other Bitcoin-something, Alts, Bitcoin Cash is definitely significantly more famous.

The cause of Bitcoin Cash fork was due to the fact that the original Bitcoin (BTC) became too slow and its transaction fees became much more expensive. Some of Bitcoin veteran supporters such as Roger Ver and Jihan Wu believed that Bitcoin’s upper block size limit should be increased from 1 MB to 8 MB. Due to never-ending debates, the pro-changes supporters decided to fork Bitcoin and decided to create its own coin which was called Bitcoin Cash (BCH).

As of today, Bitcoin Cash has upgraded its block size limit once more from 8 MB to 32 MB. If you are interested to learn more about BCH, this article might be able to help you.

Bitcoin Satoshi Vision (BSV)

Bitcoin Satoshi Vision (BSV) was launched by the controversial Craig Wright (who claimed he was Satoshi although he could never prove it). Another popular figure in BSV creation was Calvin Ayre. The two (among other BSV supporters) decided to fork Bitcoin Cash blockchain because they felt that the BCH main leaders wanted to change how BCH works by introducing two new opcodes in the script. 

Craig Wright and Calvin Ayre believed these new opcodes should never be accepted. Because they couldn’t compromise, they decided to create a new coin and call it Bitcoin Satoshi Vision (which means their version of Bitcoin aligns with Satoshi’s original vision). The split between BCh and BSV was so controversial that both camps decided to redirect their hash power to attack each other.

Even though BSV was not a direct fork from BTC blockchain but indirectly they are quite related because BCH was forked from BTC while BSV was a fork from BCH.

Bitcoin Gold (BTG)

Just like Bitcoin Cash (BCH), Bitcoin Gold was forked from the original Bitcoin blockchain. Forked on October 24, 2017, Bitcoin Gold (BTG) claimed that it won’t let any company centralize the hash power. The argument from Bitcoin Gold main developers was that BTC mining space was too centralized in the hands of the few. 
For that reason, BTG implemented a new mining algorithm which is named Equihash.

With Equihash, it’s believed that ASIC’s won’t be able to mine BTG. The hope is for standard computers to be able to mine BTG. However, the developers themselves were criticized for mining 100,000 BTG coins straight after the fork had taken place. 

The developers defended themselves and claimed that these 100,000 BTG coins were placed for future development (not to be dumped on the market). As of today, BTG is the third most popular Bitcoin-something altcoin even though it’s far less popular than BCH and BSV.

Bitcoin Diamond (BCD)

There are other versions of Bitcoin forks although they are typically even less popular than BTG. The fourth most popular Bitcoin-something altcoin is called Bitcoin Diamond (BCD) where they forked Bitcoin blockchain in November 2017. Just like BCH, BCD developers decided to fork BTC because they were not satisfied with Bitcoin’s transaction speed and costs. 

The creation of Bitcoin Diamond introduced several fundamental changes to the protocol which helped BCD to become faster and more efficient than Bitcoin. At the time of the fork, all Bitcoin holders received 10 BCD for every BTC they held.

Anyway, there are other Bitcoin forks but usually, they are far less popular than these four Altcoins (BCH, BSV, BTG, and BCD). 

To understand how they work, you should learn more about Bitcoin fundamentals, which you can do so in this article here.