If we were to depict the birth of cryptocurrencies as a family tree, Bitcoin SV would be the grandchild of Bitcoin. This coin emerged after the Bitcoin Cash fork, which, in turn, was created through a fork of the original cryptocurrency.
Why Bitcoin SV emerged
Generally, blockchain forks occur at times of dispute regarding the way a project should be managed and developed. Those seem to be unresolvable through votes or compromises.
This was precisely the case with Bitcoin Cash. When the chain increased the block size to 32 MB, some were still not satisfied and demanded an increase in capacity to 128 MB.
However, many suspected that this fork was merely an excuse for some investors to create a new cryptocurrency with a catchy name and on a well-established blockchain.
The truth may be elusive, but what is certain is that just under a year after the launch of BCH in 2017, it had already forked into BCV in 2018. This was the most contentious fork among the ten existing on the BTC blockchain. The BSV community is characterized by uncompromising views and almost fanatical adherence to "Satoshi's Vision."
Bitcoin SV stands for Satoshi's Vision, this name explains the reason (formal) for the coin's creation. The creators of BSV assert that they are carrying out Nakamoto's original intention, who created Bitcoin as a peer-to-peer digital currency. Therefore, Bitcoin SV positions itself as the true Bitcoin, with some improved features for faster transactions, while considering other "Bitcoins" as impostors that should sink into oblivion.
Bitcoin SV developers
If the first Bitcoin fork, Bitcoin Cash, was backed by BitMain co-founder Jihan Wu and venture capitalist Roger Ver, the main proponents of creating BSV were Australian programmer Craig Wright (who claims in court to be Satoshi Nakamoto himself) and billionaire Calvin Ayre (who funds Wright's controversial ideas).
The main investor in the project is a holding company called nChain, founded by Wright himself. The CEO of nChain is Christen Ager-Hanssen, who also serves as the Bitcoin Association ambassador for BSV in London.
Bitcoin SV goals and aims
According to the official website, Bitcoin SV aims to provide the best choice for miners, while its blockchain allows companies to create new applications and websites. But ultimately, the project’s key goal is to become the world's best payment system with low fees and high security.
Craig Wright and the BSV developers claim that the protocol will be left unaltered. Thus, no one will be able to make any changes to the protocol, since they want to stay true to Satoshi's original vision, and the protocol itself is "fixed – set in stone."
However, Bitcoin SV has expanded on the original vision of Satoshi Nakamoto with new features like smart contracts and NFT support.
It seems like the developers are committed to Satoshi's Vision as long as it benefits the project. In other cases, they follow market trends and user requests inexorably.
The BSV and BTC compared
Wright's bitcoin and Satoshi's bitcoin share more similarities than distinctions:
- The maximum supply is 21 million coins.
- They both rely on the Proof-of-Work consensus algorithm.
- They are mined using ASIC miners.
- Halving reduces miners' remuneration by 50%. But the Bitcoin SV network has only undergone halving once.
- At the time of writing, the circulating supply of the two cryptocurrencies is around 92% (19,266,077 BSV and 19,294943 BTC).
In essence, the main difference between BTC and BSV (besides their divergence in market cap) is the block size. While BTC has a block size limit of 1 MB, BSV can handle blocks up to 4 GB in size. This larger block size allows BSV to process up to 50,000 transactions per second.
The founders of the project argue that such a high TPS is necessary to make the Bitcoin SV blockchain suitable as a corporate platform for transnational companies. Although BSV has not yet gained the attention of large corporations, it has become the most popular cryptocurrency in the online gambling industry and is accepted by all online casinos.
