We have had many requests by users whether we will be adding Bitcoin Cash (BCH) to the iceCUBED exchange, and after careful consideration we have decided to open the Bitcoin Cash / Rand market on the exchange. User are now able to trade Bitcoin Cash in South Africa at iceCUBED exchange for Rand.

What is bitcoin cash?

Bitcoin cash (BCH) is a “fork” of bitcoin (BTC) that was created in August 2017. The main catalyst for the creation of the bitcoin cash fork of bitcoin, was the increasing transaction fees and delays in sending bitcoin.

Frustrated users of bitcoin decided to fork the project to ‘re-align’ the currency to be more like the original concept of ‘peer-to-peer electronic cash’.

A “fork” is when a change is made to the software of a digital currency, creating a new version with the different parameters. The new currency and the old currency have a shared history of addresses and transactions, but going forward, from that point they are independent and have have a different future.

What is the difference between bitcoin and bitcoin cash

The main changes that were made to bitcoin cash was that the block size was increased from 1MB that bitcoin uses, to that of a much bigger 8MB block size. The increase in block size means more transactions can fit into the block, and therefore fees to send transactions are far smaller. Bitcoin cash can therefore process more transactions per second, is faster, and is cheaper to use than bitcoin currently.

The block size limit of 1MB set in bitcoin is a measure to prevent spam attacks on the network, but as bitcoin has increased in popularity, the blocks have increasingly become more full, and therefore the fees to send transactions have been going up too. As the blocks have been reaching maximum capacity, only the transactions paying higher fees have been getting included into the block. This means that if you don’t pay the higher fees, your transaction might not get included or might be severely delayed.

The quick fix that bitcoin cash has, is to increase the block size from 1MB to 8MB, allowing a much larger number of transactions per block, increasing the throughput and decreasing the transaction fees.

Another difference is that Bitcoin Cash does not have Segwit, which is an upgrade that bitcoin implemented to resolve transaction malleability and also to develop layer 2 solutions such as the Lightning Network. It is an architecture change  that changes the way transactions are organised in bitcoin.

RBF (Replace by fee) was also removed from Bitcoin Cash during the fork process.  RBF in bitcoin allows transaction replacements by paying a higher fee for the transaction, and is not possible in Bitcoin Cash.

Bitcoin Cash also has a difference in the way the difficulty is adjusted. Bitcoin Cash has a responsive difficulty adjustment algorithm, while Bitcoin has a difficulty algorithm that adjusts every two weeks.

Increasing block size to scale

The face of Bitcoin Cash is well known bitcoin evangelist Roger Ver, who has for years been leading the charge to upgrade bitcoin to bigger blocks. Ver built up a following of like minded cryptocurrency enthusiasts who all agreed that increasing the block size would solve the scaling problem of bitcoin, making it faster and cheaper. When it was clear that bitcoin would not be upgrading to a bigger block size, Ver switched his focus to forking bitcoin, and thus Bitcoin Cash was born.

Room for both bitcoin and bitcoin cash in the market

The massive price appreciation of bitcoin over the last 9 years, combined with the increase in fees to send bitcoin, has turned it more into a store of value than a digital currency that one could use for small transactions. While bitcoin is well on its way to becoming the worlds first digital commodity, bitcoin cash’s smaller fees and speed make it mechanically better suited as a payment system than bitcoin at this time.

Bitcoin aims to roll out solutions to the fee problem using the lightning network and other upgrades scheduled for 2018 and beyond, but until that is the standard, bitcoin cash is generally cheaper to send transactions.

It is our opinion that there is plenty of room in the cryptocurrency market for both bitcoin and bitcoin cash to exist and both flourish. In fact there are currently over 1400 other cryptocurrencies available in the ever growing ecosystem.

Right now Bitcoin Cash (BCH) has a main focus to be ‘peer-to-peer electronic cash’, while Bitcoin(BTC) aims to be a store of value.

Sending and receiving Bitcoin Cash

WARNING! Make sure that you only send Bitcoin Cash (BCH) to your Bitcoin Cash (BCH) deposit address as we will NOT be able to recover any Bitcoin (BTC) sent to a Bitcoin Cash (BCH) address, and vice versa.

Since bitcoin cash and bitcoin both share the same history, many of their addresses are indistinguishable from each other. It is impossible to know for sure if a wallet address is a bitcoin address, or a bitcoin cash address. There is therefore a danger of making a mistake and sending bitcoin cash to a bitcoin address, or vice versa. If you do this, your funds might be lost forever! Please always double check when sending and receiving both bitcoin or bitcoin cash, that you are sending the correct cryptocurrency to the right type of wallet address.

If you would like to trade bitcoin cash in South Africa for Rand, visit the market on iceCUBED exchange here: https://ice3x.com/bch-zar

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