Bitcoin is the original cryptocurrency , and more than 9 years after its introduction, it’s still the most visible and popular form of digital money. It’s maintained supremacy in spite of the thousands of imitators inspired by its success, including everything from heavy hitters like Ethereum to jokey tokens like DogeCoin. But somewhere in the fracas, Bitcoin spawned its own child, a new coin called Bitcoin Cash. Why is there a need for two kinds of Bitcoin? What’s the origin of Bitcoin Cash? And is there a significant difference between the two? The Problem with Bitcoin Although Bitcoin has proven that cryptocurrency is a feasible concept, and made many people extremely wealthy along the way, it’s not perfect. The Bitcoin network can process seven transactions per second. That might seem like a lot, but compare that to Visa, the world’s largest credit card company. Visa processes an average of 1,700 transactions every second, more than 150 million a day—and it has to, si