Bitcoin Cash History: The Scaling Debate and the Fork
2015–2017: Bitcoin's Scaling Debate
By the mid-2010s, the Bitcoin network was straining under growing load: 1 MB blocks could no longer keep up with transaction volume, driving fees up and confirmations slower. A dispute erupted in the community over how to fix it: some proposed increasing the block size, others wanted to adopt the SegWit soft fork and Layer 2 solutions without touching the base protocol.
August 1, 2017: The Hard Fork and Bitcoin Cash's Birth
Unable to reach agreement with the rest of the community, big-block proponents — including early investor Roger Ver, Bitmain's Jihan Wu, and former Bitcoin lead developer Gavin Andresen — carried out a hard fork on August 1, 2017, at block 478,559, raising the block size limit to 8 MB (later 32 MB). Anyone holding BTC at that moment automatically received an equal amount of the new coin, Bitcoin Cash.
December 2017: A Price Peak Amid the Broader Rally
Amid the broader crypto boom of late 2017, Bitcoin Cash reached an all-time high of roughly $4,355 on December 20, 2017.
2018: Another Split — Bitcoin SV Is Born
The disagreements didn't end with one fork: in November 2018, the Bitcoin Cash community itself split over the project's future direction, leading to yet another coin — Bitcoin SV (BSV), championed by a faction led by Craig Wright.