Bitcoin has a simple design. And even though its design is simple, it performs excellently well at what it does. BTC’s simplicity is one of the many reasons Bitcoin’s price is high. However, Bitcoin’s use is limited. For this reason, developers came up with what is called forks. Forks are variants of Bitcoin in which there is a change in the protocol of the Bitcoin network.
Dash and Bitcoin Cash are examples of forked Bitcoin. They are both built on blockchain technology and are pretty similar to Bitcoin. However, Bitcoin Cash and Dash were forked from Bitcoin to add new features. Below we will be enumerating the differences and similarities between Bitcoin, Dash, and Bitcoin Cash.
What is Bitcoin?
As you may already know, Bitcoin is a digital currency launched in 2009 by Satoshi Nakamoto. Unlike fiat currencies, Bitcoin prices are pretty high despite having no physical coins; instead, Bitcoins live on a decentralized ledger system known as the blockchain. The advantages of using Bitcoin are numerous; this is why the Bitcoin price is so high.
No doubt, Bitcoin is king; however, it still lags in some areas. For example, in the area of transaction speed, payment providers can process as many as 150 million transactions a day, which puts it at about 1,700 transactions per second. However, Bitcoin in its current state can only process about seven transactions a second, which no doubt is relatively low.
What is Dash?
In 2017, Evan Duffield and a group of developers created a fork out of Litecoin known as Dash. Note, Litecoin is a Bitcoin fork. Unlike Bitcoin, Dash operates on a self-funding and self-governing model, meaning that the Dash network can fund itself for further development.
Dash aimed to mitigate two major problems of Bitcoin; slow transaction speed and lack of privacy. Dash has the edge over Bitcoin because of these three features; InstantSend, PrivateSend, and Masternode. In addition to this, it is much cheaper to transact with Dash comparable to Bitcoin.
What is Bitcoin Cash?
In late 2015, Pieter Wuille came up with the idea of SegWit. Essentially, SegWit’s vision was to break down the size of Bitcoin transactions to enable more transactions to take place at once. Technically, SegWit is a soft fork. However, in 2017 a group of Bitcoin developers and crypto investors decided to initiate a hard fork to avoid this protocol, and that was how Bitcoin Cash emerged.
Bitcoin Cash set out to mitigate Bitcoin’s biggest problem – scalability. Compared to Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash has a much larger block size of about 32 MB. The larger block size means that Bitcoin Cash can handle considerably more transactions daily. Many critics claim that Bitcoin Cash has remained the most successful hard fork since the inception of primary cryptocurrency. As of November, Bitcoin Cash is the twentieth largest digital currency by market capitalization.
Differences and similarities between Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash, and Dash
Although Bitcoin’s price remains higher than Bitcoin Cash and Dash, these two are pretty valuable. Below are some features that differentiate Bitcoin and its counterparts.
Block size
Block size is the amount of data it can store. The larger the block size, the more data it can hold. Despite Bitcoin’s high price, it has the smallest block size – 1 MB. Dash has a block size of 2 MB; hence it can store and transact twice as much as Bitcoin. Bitcoin Cash, however, has a block size of 32 MB with the potential to increase in the future.
Transaction speed
Transaction speed matters a lot when it comes to verifying transactions. One factor that influences the transaction speed is the block size. The larger the block size, the faster the coin will be able to verify transactions. Although Bitcoin’s price is the highest among these three cryptocurrencies, Bitcoin has the slowest transaction speed. Dash is next when it comes to transaction speed. Bitcoin Cash has the fastest transaction speed.
Fees
Because Bitcoin has a limited block size, having a lot of traffic could increase transaction fees. Apart from Bitcoin price being high, its transaction fees are higher compared to Dash or Bitcoin Cash. While between these three, Bitcoin Cash has the lowest transaction fees.
Hashrate
Hashrate is the processing power of miners to secure the network and ensure transaction throughput. Technically, the hash rate is a component of the Proof of Work consensus mechanism. The more complex crypto is to mine, the higher the hash rate. Bitcoin Cash has a significant hash rate, followed by Bitcoin and then Dash.
