Bitcoin Cash is a blockchain network based on the PoW consensus mechanism, and $BCH is the The network’s native token. $BCH can be used for a variety of purposes, including peer-to-peer transactions, online purchases, investing, and store of value.

In 2017, the Bitcoin Cash network split from the Bitcoin (BTC) network and became a variant of Bitcoin, that is, a "hard fork."

A fork is essentially a split in a blockchain network/community. A fork occurs when the original rules of a blockchain network are changed, intentionally or unintentionally. In the case of a hard fork, the previous version and the new version will be completely separated, and there will be no communication or trading options between the two.

For more information about "fork", please refer to the entry: What is a fork?

This hard fork is due to within the Bitcoin community. There are disagreements over issues such as scalability and transaction speed of the original Bitcoin network. Different from the original BTC community's goals of resisting censorship and minimizing trust, supporters of the BCH network regard "Building a peer-to-peer electronic cash system" as their core proposition and aim to improve transaction throughput and reduce transaction fees, enabling faster and cheaper transactions.

Specifically, in Bitcoin’s original design, each block was 1MB in size. As Bitcoin is increasingly used by more people, the 1MB block size becomes very cramped when processing a large number of transactions, which also leads to high latency and high transaction fees for the entire network.

The solution proposed by the BCH network is to increase the size of each block from 1MB to 8MB to increase the number of transactions the network can handle (BCH's block size limit has been in effect since May 2018 It was further increased to 32MB). From this perspective, $BCH is indeed a faster, more efficient, and more suitable version of Bitcoin for daily use. Therefore, the BCH community believes that $BCH is more in line with Satoshi Nakamoto’s original intention.

Because it is divided from the Bitcoin network Forked out, the BCH network and the BTC network also have many things in common. For example, they all use PoW consensus; they are all decentralized networks, and anyone can participate and contribute; the target block time of the network is 10 minutes; the maximum supply is 21 million; every 210,000 blocks (About four years), the system will halve the issuance of tokens.

Why does circulation halve every four years? What does this mean for the web as a whole? Please refer to the entry: What is Bitcoin Halving? Bitcoin Halving

In November 2018, the BCH network itself was forked into two chains. This fork stemmed from the fact that the developer team behind BCH could not agree on a network update. In August 2018, Bitcoin ABC, a developer team endorsed by Bitmain, proposed a consensus update, hoping to expand more functions to the BCH network and pave the way for future support for smart contracts. nChain, which is also part of the developer team, rejected this update, calling it a "betrayal of Satoshi Nakamoto and the P2P electronic cash system." Due to this community split, the BCH network was eventually forked into BCH (also called BCHABC because it is dominated by Bitcoin ABC) and Bitcoin SV (BSV, SV stands for "Satoshi's version").

It is worth mentioning that Craig Wright, the founder of nChain, has repeatedly claimed that he is Satoshi Nakamoto, although he has so far been unable to complete effective self-certification.