Which brings us to the new proposal, which is confusingly named “bitcoin cash.” It calls for an eight-fold increase in the block-size limit on Aug. 1. Its name alludes to the faction that wants bitcoin to be a payment network—as readily available and easy to use as cash—as opposed to the group that sees bitcoin as akin to digital gold.
One exchange has started a futures market for bitcoin cash, since it doesn’t actually exist yet. On its first day of trading, on July 23, one unit of bitcoin cash traded for around half a bitcoin. It has slipped to around 0.2 bitcoin per bitcoin cash at the time of writing.
Although bitcoin cash is certain to enact a hard fork in the cryptocurrency, that will matter only if it attracts enough miners to keep it going. Then, bitcoin and bitcoin cash could end up like ethereum and ethereum classic; two separate but viable coins that originated from the same blockchain. If miners ignore bitcoin cash, it will simply fade away as its transactions are rejected by miners.
