I am confused to the status of Bitcoin classic. There is a lot of support for Cash on the Classic website which leads me to think they are the same. Also I see more news for Cash than for Classic. Also, was it not true the currency acronym 'BCC' was reserved for Classic? Now I see its used for Bitcoin Cash.
What is the difference between Cash and Classic forks?
Bitcoin Cash is an altcoin, i.e. a Bitcoin-like protocol and network that originated from hardforking Bitcoin chainstate. Bitcoin Classic was first a hardfork proposal and then an alternative implementation of first the Bitcoin protocol, then the Bitcoin Cash protocol.
Originally, Bitcoin Classic was a hardfork proposal that advocated for a blocksize increase to be activated with 75% hashrate support. To that end, the Bitcoin Classic repository maintained only the set of changes necessary to introduce said blocksize increase, rebasing this on top of the latest changes of the Bitcoin Core repository. When it became obvious that there was too little support for Classic, the Classic repository started to fall behind, work subsequently being discontinued.
Later, the Bitcoin Classic repository was revived by a developer as an alternative implementation of the Bitcoin protocol. They introduced a number of other changes into this repository instead of only maintaining the code for the blocksize increase. For a while, Bitcoin Classic cooperated with Bitcoin Unlimited, e.g. with both implementations rolling out support for thin blocks. Later, Bitcoin Classic maintained an alternative implementation of the Bitcoin Cash protocol. It was recently discontinued altogether.
Bitcoin Cash is essentially a clone of the existing Bitcoin blockchain​ with one important feature: additional block size capacity. Those who owned Bitcoin before the split now own an equal amount of Bitcoin Cash, meaning Bitcoin Cash and Bitcoin each now have 16.5 million units in circulation. Multiply Bitcoin Cash's recent price of $607 times 16.5 million units, and you arrive at a market cap of $10.8 billion, making it the third-most valuable cryptocurrency​ at around 16% of Bitcoin's $69 billion market value.
There is one other HUGE difference - it has no platform of use or distribution - meaning the webstores that take bitcoin - do not automatically take bitcoin cash - and the ATM network that sells bitcoin does not just automatically vend also bitcoin cash.
There was a down vote because a reader did not understand the plain answer - which does answer the question.
Bitcoin is a very technical digital currency more people want to "buy" to invest in hopes it will increase rather than use it for an international cash currency it was written to be. In that vein, most websites that accept "bitcoin" - do not interchange "bitcoin cash". That is the real question being asked here in the end.
Bitcoin and Bitcoin Cash are different - and yes "cash" is a fork of what one would know as the "Classic" form of Bitcoin. Bitcoin Classic technically has features that fix Bitcoin issues right now - but it is STILL programatically "Bitcoin" - not "Bitcoin Cash"
I am going to edit this one last time to re-iterate what the original question was. I will state upfront I have no intention of downloading "Bitcoin Classic" as a piece of software to test and explore where or what I might run into as a bug. For one it appears to require a full node server implementation to do so. The daemon we use right now has gone through many iterations of versions solving and squashing bugs that popped up here and there and no one in their right mind would look to something new and unproven to possibly complicate things that are working.
So no one should really care about Bitcoin Cash if they are using it as a currency - unless they are trying to buy something a low price in hopes it will outstrip Bitcoin in a race to a climb so they can sell it at a higher profit.
The view of Bitcoin should be as a currency - not an investment or technical argument - and recently governments have begun attacking it for being used as a method to raise capital. Investors in their "greed" contribute to its volital price, and Bitcoin exchanges re-positioning themselves in a "stock market" look and feel - feed this "investment" mentality.
When it comes to legitimate businesses implementing ways to accept Bitcoin as a form of payment, there are only a few ways to do it. All of them involve waiting on the transaction to clear - so a retail store is not good option unless one is willing to take a risk on a loss or make the customer to wait on a a confirmed transaction.
All of them involve that one put up a full server and invite every hacker to attack you, go with a thin client like Electrum as I showed here => Thin command line-capable client for Linux which requires some programming skills and a Webstore and Linux type server to have root access to Linux features for, or the most developed commercial solution with the most options out there that ties one to an onerous solution use - https://bitpay.com.
Looking at the tar file for linux for Bitcoin Classic - there is quite a bit of work to set it up and guess work too according to https://bitcoinclassic.com/linuxbuilds.html . To be blunt, many commercial websites are running CentOS7 which is a flavor of Red Hat and they are looking to use "yum" via RPM files to keep their systems up to date automatically and "sane" with proper dependencies, and "Bitcoin Classic" has no RPM version at all. I digress - because a technical discussion has no value if the product in this case "Bitcoin Classic" and "Bitcoin Cash" have no viable commercial platform it would be used on as a payment acceptance method in a webstore.
Do not get me wrong - https://bitpay.com - has the most open source solutions collected in one place, but using it also means paying their fee structure and especially if using their "Bitpay" VISA card. It is 1% versus the 3% that a bankcard charges. Bitpay - has a user agreement that translates a Bitcoin transaction basically back into a non-permanent credit card type transaction and has a focus on using Bitcoin as an actual payment solution like VISA and Mastercard; and on our website there is a Bitcoin payment method one can select instead of the bankcard route. If you use any of Bitpay's solution software for your webstore / webcart - you must buy into the whole thing as they have implemented it. They will serve you a Request address to send to.
You will NOT find any mention of Bitcoin Cash or Bitcoin Classic at https://Bitpay.com at all because they are actually oxymorons to the Bitcoin issue of using Bitcoin as a cash equivalent currency. You need to send it - it needs to arrive as a permanent payment- and the seller then makes the risky decision to immediately convert it to local currency - or not.
Bitcoin classic states on their website " Bitcoin Classic stands for the original Bitcoin as Satoshi described it, "A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System". "; and that is how I defined it to answer the question - with the reality that the other side of the question is HOW businesses can accept it as such and how it has also been polluted by commercial efforts to offer "Bitcoin" and protect themselves from potential fraud and customer complaints when they are providing the tools for businesses to use it defraud customers potentially.
In January of 2016 this article was written, and it is still true today => https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/innovations/wp/2016/01/19/r-i-p-bitcoin-its-time-to-move-on/?utm_term=.3781ce190f21 as the technical argument about ALL digital currencies range on - and "Bitcoin Classic" while touting it is 100% compatible with "simple" Bitcoin is no different.
So if someone wants to engage in a technical discussion about the idiosyncrasies of something that illustrates how pollution in the air is why all of those suffer if forced to breath it - that is obvious and you can count me out.
The curious thing is much of the world is not looking at "where" the processing power behind Bitcoin - of any type - is located.
So the answer to the question is what I addressed - Bitcoin Classic is for all intents and purposes the same as "Bitcoin" - with the exception that it is relatively new and technically not supported well but with features supposed to solve issues that Bitcoin has right now; and I would never trust my business to Bitcoin Classic - especially right now - because it may also harbor bugs and other issues - in addition to the fact that it is just not supported out there yet - and certainly is no drop in replacement for what we use right now. Bitcoin Cash is a fork and we are not even "looking" at looking to support it.
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