Bitcoin CashBCH
The big-block fork of 1 August 2017, Bitcoin's first durable chain split.
Vlad landed on BTC in 2017 and disliked the campaign to call BCH “the real Bitcoin”. Nine years later he spent eight hours with the big blockers who stayed. The wiki keeps both: the facts, and that history.[1][2]
Split
Bitcoin Cash is the main consequence of the block size war. It split from Bitcoin on 1 August 2017 by flag day; the last common block was 478,558, and the first BCH-only block, 478,559, was mined by ViaBTC about six hours later at about 1.9 MB[1]. Calin Culianu, who worked on Bitcoin ABC, told Bitcoin Takeover he was "there on Fork Day"[2].
Bitcoin ABC
The software that launched the fork was Bitcoin ABC, led by Amaury Séchet. He told the podcast it was its own fork of Bitcoin Core and did not reuse the work of XT, Classic or Unlimited[3].
Upgrades
Bitcoin Cash upgrades on a May/November schedule. It replaced its emergency difficulty adjustment in November 2017, raised the limit to 32 MB and re-enabled opcodes including OP_CAT in May 2018, added CTOR in November 2018, Schnorr signatures in 2019, the ASERT difficulty algorithm in November 2020, CashTokens in May 2023 and the ABLA adaptive block size algorithm in May 2024[1]. Séchet has said many big blockers initially resisted changing the difficulty algorithm because it would cement BCH as a minority fork[4].
Children
Bitcoin Cash has split twice: Bitcoin SV left on 15 November 2018 and Bitcoin ABC's chain, later eCash (XEC), left on 15 November 2020[1].
Heard on Bitcoin Takeover
Peter Rizun, who said he worked on Bitcoin Cash, still asked on S16 E30 (June 2025): “Why did Bitcoin Cash fork right there? I mean, I was part of it, I was working on Bitcoin Cash, but again, who was really pulling those strings? I don't know.”[5]
Roger Ver framed the fork as a consequence of fees on S15 E26 (March 2024): “If the user experience had continued to be good on Bitcoin, nobody would use Litecoin for anything. Bitcoin Cash never would have even come into existence.”[6]
Early investor Marc De Mesel, looking back on S17 E44 (September 2026), said that “up until today, Bitcoin Cash did not prove to be a success”.[7]
References
- btkBitcoin Cash: The Big Block Breakaway (BTCTKVR: Forks!) [archived]
- episodeS17 E26: Calin Culianu — “I was there on Fork Day”▶ listen at 4:47timestamp transcript-derived, pending a listen [archived]
- episodeS17 E19: Amaury Séchet — Bitcoin ABC was its own fork of Core, not XT/Classic/Unlimited▶ listen at 56:35timestamp transcript-derived, pending a listen [archived]
- episodeS17 E19: Amaury Séchet — why many big blockers resisted changing BCH's difficulty algorithm▶ listen at 1:45:36timestamp transcript-derived, pending a listen [archived]
- episodeS16 E30: Peter Rizun on the timing of the Bitcoin Cash fork▶ listen at 1:32:57timestamp transcript-derived, pending a listen [archived]
- episodeS15 E26: Roger Ver on why Bitcoin Cash exists▶ listen at 10:39timestamp transcript-derived, pending a listen [archived]
- episodeS17 E44: Marc De Mesel on Bitcoin Cash's record▶ listen at 18:24timestamp transcript-derived, pending a listen [archived]