Bitcoin Cash Price Tracker (BCH) & Whale Tracker

What is Bitcoin Cash

Bitcoin Cash is the cryptocurrency that split from Bitcoin on 1 August 2017 over a disagreement about how to scale. One camp wanted Bitcoin to stay a settlement layer with small blocks and move payments to networks built on top; the other wanted bigger blocks so the base chain itself could handle everyday transactions cheaply. The big-block camp, backed by miners including Bitmain, the investor Roger Ver and the developer Amaury Séchet, forked the chain, and Bitcoin Cash was the result.

BCH is the ticker. Anyone who held bitcoin at the moment of the fork received an equal amount of Bitcoin Cash, and the two chains share their history up to that block. Since then Bitcoin Cash has followed its own road: 32-megabyte blocks, fees of a fraction of a cent, and a stated mission of being peer-to-peer electronic cash. The live price, market cap and supply at the top of this page refresh automatically.

The project has no company or foundation in charge. Several independent node implementations, led by Bitcoin Cash Node, coordinate upgrades through a published schedule of twice-yearly hard forks.

How Bitcoin Cash works

Bitcoin Cash is a proof-of-work chain using the same SHA-256 algorithm as Bitcoin, so the same mining hardware works on both and miners switch between them based on profitability. Blocks arrive roughly every ten minutes with a difficulty adjustment every block rather than every two weeks, a change made so the chain could survive sudden swings in hash rate after the fork. Since May 2024 the block size limit adjusts automatically with demand under an algorithm called ABLA.

Transactions are cheap because block space is not scarce. A typical transfer costs well under a cent and confirms in the next block, which is what makes point-of-sale payments practical without a second layer. The chain restored some scripting features that Bitcoin had removed and, with the CashTokens upgrade in May 2023, added native tokens and NFTs that work without a separate virtual machine.

Wallets such as Bitcoin.com, Electron Cash and Paytaca support the network, and the Cash Fusion protocol offers optional privacy by mixing coins among participants.

Supply and tokenomics

Bitcoin Cash keeps Bitcoin's monetary rules: a maximum of 21 million coins and a block reward that halves every 210,000 blocks. Because the chains share history, the supply figures move almost in step; the fourth halving happened in April 2024, cutting the reward to 3.125 BCH, and the next is expected in 2028. Around 95 percent of all BCH has been mined.

There is no development fund in the protocol. A 2020 proposal to divert eight percent of block rewards to developers was rejected, and its backers split off to create eCash. Miners earn only the block reward and fees, and since fees are tiny, mining revenue depends almost entirely on the price of BCH relative to Bitcoin.

History and milestones

The fork in August 2017 was followed by a bitter period in which supporters argued over which chain deserved the Bitcoin name. BCH reached its all-time high above 4,000 dollars in December 2017 at the peak of that bull market. In November 2018 the chain split again when Craig Wright and Calvin Ayre's faction forked off to create Bitcoin SV after a hash war, and in November 2020 it split a third time, producing eCash, over the developer-fund dispute.

Each split cost Bitcoin Cash developers, supporters and price. Through the 2020s the project settled into steady, low-drama development: CashTokens in 2023, adaptive block sizes in 2024 and a growing set of merchant tools. Roger Ver, its most prominent advocate, was arrested in Spain in April 2024 on US tax charges and reached a deferred-prosecution agreement in 2025. Grayscale offers a Bitcoin Cash trust, and BCH has remained listed on every major exchange through every cycle.

What people use Bitcoin Cash for

Payments are the mission, and there is real usage: merchants in cities such as St. Kitts and Nevis, Townsville in Australia and pockets of Latin America accept BCH through point-of-sale apps, and the Bitcoin.com wallet has tens of millions of downloads. Charities and content creators accept it for the near-zero fees. The volumes are modest compared with stablecoins, but the chain delivers what it promised: cheap, direct transfers without a second layer.

For traders, BCH is a liquid, long-established asset that tends to move with Bitcoin and spike during memecoin and altcoin rallies. CashTokens has brought a small DeFi and NFT scene, and the chain's low fees make it a common rail for exchange withdrawals.

Where to buy and trade Bitcoin Cash

BCH is listed on Coinbase, Binance, Kraken, OKX, Bybit, Bitstamp and nearly every other exchange, with liquid pairs against the dollar and major stablecoins. Exchange-traded products tracking BCH exist in Europe and Canada, Grayscale's trust trades in the United States, and spot ETF filings were made in 2025.

Self-custody options include the Bitcoin.com wallet, Electron Cash, Paytaca and Ledger or Trezor hardware devices. Bitcoin Cash uses the CashAddr address format, which starts with bitcoincash: or q, to prevent coins being sent to Bitcoin addresses by mistake. Check the network carefully when withdrawing from an exchange.

Risks to understand

Bitcoin Cash has lost the branding war: most people mean Bitcoin when they say bitcoin, and BCH has fallen to a small fraction of Bitcoin's value since 2017. Hash rate is a fraction of Bitcoin's, which in theory makes the chain easier to attack, and the history of splits shows governance disputes can fracture it again.

Stablecoins on fast chains now compete for the same payments use case. BCH is volatile and has spent years far below its 2017 high. This guide is a reference for the data above, not investment advice.

Bitcoin Cash FAQ