Ever since creating the first digital asset, the birth of the crypto sector has revolutionized the way the financial market is seen. This is because Bitcoin's creation opened a door that other developers could only kick as at then. Since the creation of Bitcoin in 2009, the Satoshi Nakamoto created project has gained massive acceptance across the entire world. With this, there have been numerous projects building on its blockchain or taking out of its source code to create a similar token. In this article, we will be discussing Bitcoin forks, why they happen, and the most popular forks in the history of the asset.

Bitcoin is a digital asset created and launched by Satoshi Nakamoto in 2009. According to the Whitepaper of its creation, the digital asset sought to find solutions to some basic problems in the financial sector. Although no one knows its founder's identity, the asset has continued to wax strong in value and adoption. One of the token's identities is that it affords traders to make exchanges using a decentralized entity. Although the token cannot be physically seen, the amount kept on the network known as blockchain can be viewed by everyone.

Going by the history of Bitcoin, the pseudonymous developer Satoshi Nakamoto created the source code and launched the digital asset in 2009. As a result, various digital assets have adopted Bitcoin's vision in their creation. This means that most of these digital assets banked on Nakamoto's source code when creating Bitcoin. Instead, some developers choose to make slight changes to the codes while creating their crypto. With this, a Bitcoin fork is a slight change in the original protocol of the leading digital asset. A hard fork is upgrading the software and various mining procedures to create a new version of the blockchain. However, a soft fork does not involve the creation of new tokens. Instead, they involve slight changes to the protocol.

One major characteristic of a fork on the blockchain is the changes made to the original code used to develop a token. With this, there is usually the springing up of another token. Initially, developers have been known to create tokens either through development from the core or through the source code of an existing token. Although creating from scratch is similar to a fork, they are different. A fork allows developers to make key changes to a blockchain rather than start from scratch with a new source code. The main reasons developers fork depend on various factors, such as providing more functionality to the newly developed token. A fork also allows developers to address certain security issues and risks. Finally, forks occur when there is an in-house scuffle about the direction of a project. Most times, this leads to the creation of another token.

Over the years since the creation of Bitcoin, we have seen developers make specific changes to the codes, birthing entirely new cryptos. Below are the main forks of Bitcoin that has ever happened since 2009:

The Bitcoin XT was one of the first hard forks of Bitcoin made in 2014. It was during the early stages after the token entered the market. At that period, the token was not full-blown which moved its proponent, Michael Hearn, to propose some new features. The change was simple, the number of transactions carried out will be increased to 24 per second instead of the usual 7. Hearn propositioned that the block size should increase to around 8 MB instead of the usual 1 MB to achieve this aim. Although it gathered quite a massive number of users until 2015, interest in the project began to wane. Presently, it is no longer available, and its website has been pulled down.

After the failure of the Bitcoin XT project, some of the few members interested were still on about increasing the size of the block. To achieve this, a new team of developers floated Bitcoin Classic around the early stages of 2016. Also, the developers learned from the failure of Bitcoin XT. They decided to change their block size to 2 MB instead of 8 MB. Like the previous hard fork, Bitcoin Classic received widespread support, which has continued to dwindle. Although the project is very much around, it has lost the massive support it once had during the earlier stages.

Bitcoin Unlimited has continued to retain its unique status since its development in 2016. Although the developers have already made the code available, they have not still pointed out the type of fork. One exciting aspect of the project is its focus on miners carrying out their activities independently. This means that miners can determine the block size that they want but with a 16 MB limit. Even though it showed promise in the early stages, Bitcoin Unlimited has remained somewhat a shadow of what it was meant to be.

Segregated Witness or SegWit came to light in the wake of its developer's need to reduce the individual block size of Bitcoin transactions. The idea, postulated by Pieter Wuille in 2015, was focused on making sure more transactions were carried out in a short space of time. To make this possible, Wuille said some of the signatures needed to verify transactions would be extended to another block, giving room for the idea. Although it was created as a soft fork, it has helped push more hard forks of Bitcoin across the years.

Responding to the creation of the Segregated Witness, some core developers did not support some of the updates. In light of this, they decided to create a hard fork that would help them avoid the updates. Bitcoin Cash was created in 2016 and moved away from the main Bitcoin blockchain in 2017 after some transactions were not verified on the new blockchain. Bitcoin Cash has continued to move gradually, cementing its place in the market. The token has been fairly successful in trading at a current market price of $373. Notably, Bitcoin Cash refused to use the SegWit protocol and place an 8 MB cap on its block.

After the success that Bitcoin Cash experienced after its creation, some developers went ahead to launch Bitcoin Gold. The sim of this creation was to take Bitcoin back to the period where just GPUs were used. This is because, at the time, miners began to rely on more advanced hardware to create Bitcoin. One key feature was the pre-mine, which allowed miners to make about 100,000 tokens of the asset. During the launch, the developers said that the tokens would grow the community. Although Bitcoin Gold uses all the functionality of Bitcoin, the key difference is how the proof of work mechanism works.

Making a fork out of a blockchain is like entirely creating a new set of rules that would distinguish the new token from the one on the blockchain. Although they have been a barrage of Bitcoin forks, as mentioned above, the biggest remain Bitcoin Cash and Bitcoin Gold. However, you should note that a fork might affect how the community or the wider audience sees a digital asset. This means that a fork might affect the primary token's price and other on-chain analyses. It is also expected that some developers would still want to fork out Bitcoin in the future. This is due to the large success enjoyed by the digital asset.

Bitcoin SV or Bitcoin Satoshi‘s Vision is a hard fork of Bitcoin Cash. The coin was tossed in the fall of 2019 fetching on a so-called "hash war“. Bitcoin SV has hardly any discrepancy compared to Bitcoin Cash, yet both coins have been able to establish themselves on the -market. This post is all about Bitcoin SV and should you add it to your portfolio.

Blockchain technology firm nChain created the BSV and has been providing protocol updates that fix the operations of the actual Bitcoin protocol. nChain now has a team that strives to run the node software and other foundation mechanisms for the BSV network.

nChain Chief Scientist Craig Wright, who has self- asserted to be Satoshi Nakamoto, has been a promoter of BSV after the separation between BCH and BSV in 2018, after the recommendation of contentious protocol modifications by various BCH developers.

During Bitcoin’s earlier phases of growth, the blockchain was more than competent in handling the transaction burden of a miniature community, mostly comprised of programmers and cryptography fanatics. But as Bitcoin’s rage increased, the blockchain began to get mired with a rising volume of transactions, ultimately causing a severe consequence on processing duration.

Many became worried that someday, Bitcoin transactions might need days or weeks to unclog if nothing was performed to handle the problem. If these multi-day uncertainties were to actually happen, transaction prices could rise enormously. These pause and fee problems constituted the core of what evolved as Bitcoin’s scalability issue.

The purpose of Bitcoin SV is to achieve the foremost idea of the Bitcoin protocol and plan as defined in Satoshi Nakamoto’s white paper. BSV strives to deliver scalability and resilience in line with the actual definition of Bitcoin as a peer-to-peer electronic cash method, as well as provide a circulated data grid that can back enterprise-level cutting-edge blockchain applications. But in fact, Bitcoin SV (BSV) arose after a hard fork of the Bitcoin Cash in 2018. The Bitcoin Cash is the hard fork of the Bitcoin blockchain.

The primary distinctions between Bitcoin Cash and Bitcoin SV are the block size. Bitcoin SV has quadrupled it likewise to a max of 128 megabytes. In expansion, Bitcoin SV reactivated OP codes that were switched off in Bitcoin at the start and thus reintroduced an entire programming language at the protocol grade.

Now, this Bitcoin SV has terminated manufactured block size limits and re-configured Script commands and other specialized capacities which had been off or limited by the protocol architects of the Bitcoin blockchain. This permits the blockchain to process numerous transactions per second while keeping very lower transaction prices for micropayments, in addition to delivering cutting-edge stuff such as tokens, smart contracts, analysis, and much more.

BSV uses the proof-of-work instrument as illustrated in the Bitcoin white paper. This suggests that for a block having the latest transactions to be mounted on the blockchain, miners must crack an intricate mathematical puzzle by utilizing their machine’s processing capacity. The miner who cracks this puzzle first gains the block prize and transaction expenses, and their block is mounted on the blockchain.

BSV varies from other renditions of Bitcoin in its compliance to the actual Bitcoin protocol and concentrates on acknowledging the idea for the Bitcoin network drafted in the Bitcoin white paper. Unlike Bitcoin, which now predominantly works as an asset or store of value asset, BSV strives to deliver a scalable and functional blockchain platform for robust incomes and circulated data applications for clients and businesses.

As described by the actual Bitcoin protocol, there will be an utmost of 21 million BSV coins. New coins from this circulation are allocated to BSV miners via block dividends, which they gain in extra transaction expenses for verifying blocks.

The prizes for miners are slashed by 50% at pre-established times to gradually move the dependence of miners on these contributions to transaction costs and to decrease the outpour of fresh tokens as they hover their utmost quantity.

Now, the question is should you add BSV to your portfolio? So, before making any investment, users should perform their own analysis, study, and research. It is always more profitable to study several cryptocurrencies and the current market emotions and various parameters before investing. 

Bitcoin SV has consistently managed to grab attention again and again through the suspicious goings-on from Craig Wright. But not ever in a positive way. Since Wright messed with some big names from the crypto world, he pulled the wrath of Binance chief Changpeng Zhao (CZ). After the situation worsened, Binance removed BSV from the list. It didn't take long for Kraken and it also began a survey on Twitter as to whether BSV should be removed. Participants voted in favor and the cryptocurrency suffered another setback.