What Is Bitcoin SV (BSV)?
Bitcoin SV is a cryptocurrency also known as Bitcoin Satoshi's Vision. The coin is named like that since its key aim is to meet the goals outlined in the original Bitcoin protocol whitepaper described by Satoshi Nakamoto. It's important to note that the Bitcoin SV price differs from BTC or other Bitcoin forks.
In keeping with the initial goal of Bitcoin to be a peer-to-peer electronic currency system, BSV also seeks to provide scalability and reliability to the Bitcoin network. It aims to create a scalable blockchain platform for effective payments and distributed data apps, unlike BTC, which now primarily serves as an investment or a store of value asset.
Bitcoin SV is able to support advanced features like smart contracts, computation, and other data use cases. This allows developers to build blockchain applications on the BSV network. At the same time, it can process thousands of transactions per second while maintaining significantly low micropayment transaction fees.
In fact, the Bitcoin SV crypto project is able to handle up to 100,000 transactions per second. Due to that, BSV can compete with such payment platforms as, let's say, VISA. It can even try to surpass its payment processing capabilities while only charging a small portion of the fees that VISA does.
To achieve this, BSV has eliminated arbitrary block size restrictions and enabled Script commands in addition to other technical features that the original Bitcoin protocol doesn't have. For instance, the BSV network managed to mine up to 2 GBs of blocks in 2021, while the max block size of the Bitcoin network is only 1 MB.
Due to BSV's limitless block size, it can scale without the necessity of Layer-2 solutions to fulfill market demands and meet the requirements of any app or payment network.
How are these blocks built? Just like Bitcoin, the Bitcoin SV utilizes the Proof-of-Work (PoW) consensus mechanism. Using this mechanism, each transaction block has a unique hash (a long string of characters). A crypto miner—an individual entity or organization that is responsible for the mining process—must provide a target hash that is less than or equal to the block's hash for the block to be confirmed.
In other words, a miner has to solve complex mathematical equations. To accomplish this, they usually employ computing-intensive mining equipment. The first miner to solve an equation is the one who adds that block to the blockchain and earns block rewards.
If you're curious about the current Bitcoin SV price, check out the BSV price chart above.
The Story of Bitcoin SV
The Bitcoin community split in two in 2017 due to scalability problems, leading to the creation of Bitcoin Cash (BCH). BCH expanded block sizes and enabled the processing of more transactions. However, in 2017, the Bitcoin Cash community disagreed further on topics related to scalability and security.
Eventually, the disagreement between two developer factions over control of the Bitcoin fork led to the hard forking of Bitcoin Cash. This resulted in the creation of Bitcoin SV.
The company that developed the BSV node software and constantly keeps it updated is nChain. Craig Wright, the former Chief Scientist of nChain, has supported Bitcoin SV tokens since the beginning. He was one of the leading initiators of the fork. Besides, since the actual identity of Satoshi Nakamoto is a mystery, Wright claimed multiple times that he is Nakamoto. However, it was not proven.
Following the BSV creation, Wright established the Bitcoin Association. In essence, it's a non-profit organization that promotes the development and use of the BSV blockchain and digital currency on a global scale.
Since its launch, BSV has been a highly volatile asset. It tends to follow the same market trends as BTC. For example, in November 2021, both the BTC and BSV prices moved upwards, although Bitcoin SV peaked higher in April of the same year. Additionally, the BSV coin was negatively impacted by the crypto market crash in the summer of 2022.
The Supply of Bitcoin SV Coins
Since the goal of the Bitcoin SV crypto project is to follow the original vision of Nakamoto as precisely as possible, Bitcoin SV tokens have a max supply of 21 billion. Therefore, the asset is deflationary. Although the value of all Bitcoin forks differs, the Bitcoin SV price is expected to rise over time, similar to the pattern of the original BTC.
A way to get new BSV coins is by becoming a miner and getting block rewards. Miners receive block rewards for participating in the aforementioned Proof-of-Work process. However, in order to gradually transition miners' reliance on these rewards and to restrict the overproduction of new BSV coins as they reach their maximum supply, block rewards for miners are reduced by 50% at predetermined intervals (in the same way it's done with Bitcoin).
Aside from receiving BSV coins as rewards, you can also buy them. If you intend to purchase Bitcoin SV coins, keep in mind that the BSV price is subject to change based on general market trends and asset volatility.
