Share this article

Bitcoin Cash Is Now More Profitable to Mine Than Bitcoin

A sudden increase in the price of bitcoin cash is changing the economic dynamic between it and the original bitcoin.

Updated Sep 13, 2021, 6:50 a.m. Published Aug 18, 2017, 2:01 p.m.
bitcoin, mining

Bitcoin cash's surge above $500 today is changing more than just the the net worth of its investors and users.

The rising price is also creating the incentive for miners to dedicate computing power to the bitcoin cash blockchain, one that could find them moving away from bitcoin. With the new push, bitcoin cash miners are making around 2% more mining on bitcoin than they do on bitcoin cash.

STORY CONTINUES BELOW
Don't miss another story.Subscribe to the Crypto Daybook Americas Newsletter today. See all newsletters

And that spread could further increase with an upcoming adjustment on bitcoin cash that will make it even easier to mine.

Block 479,808 (set for this weekend) will likely trigger a difficulty adjustment downwards 50%, and if the prices of bitcoin and bitcoin cash stay the same, this means miners will make almost double on bitcoin cash what they would on bitcoin.

However, even with this threshold met, not all things are equal on both chains.

The bitcoin blockchain charges higher fees on transactions, so miners must take into account the extra 1.5 BTC per block on bitcoin (about $6,000 USD). By comparison, bitcoin cash has very low fees (typically under $50 USD).

Lastly, depending on the block times, bitcoin currently gets the 100 confirmations needed to spend the mining reward faster than bitcoin cash. (Currently, bitcoin takes about 17 hours and bitcoin cash takes about 34 hours).

Further, combined with the higher liquidity, bitcoin may still emerge as more attractive to mine at the moment.

Bitcoin mining card image via Shutterstock

More For You

Protocol Research: GoPlus Security

GP Basic Image

What to know:

  • As of October 2025, GoPlus has generated $4.7M in total revenue across its product lines. The GoPlus App is the primary revenue driver, contributing $2.5M (approx. 53%), followed by the SafeToken Protocol at $1.7M.
  • GoPlus Intelligence's Token Security API averaged 717 million monthly calls year-to-date in 2025 , with a peak of nearly 1 billion calls in February 2025. Total blockchain-level requests, including transaction simulations, averaged an additional 350 million per month.
  • Since its January 2025 launch , the $GPS token has registered over $5B in total spot volume and $10B in derivatives volume in 2025. Monthly spot volume peaked in March 2025 at over $1.1B , while derivatives volume peaked the same month at over $4B.

More For You

LUNC Surges Over 160% in a Week as Do Kwon Sentencing and Token Burns Draw Traders

(Midjourney/CoinDesk)

The rally is driven by speculation that a final verdict could bring clarity to the project, as well as technical factors like token burns.

What to know:

  • Terra Classic (LUNC) surged 74% to $0.0000072, up 160% in the past week, on exploding trading volume, ahead of Terraform Labs founder Do Kwon's sentencing on Dec. 11.
  • The rally is driven by speculation that a final verdict could bring clarity to the project, as well as technical factors like token burns, with 849 million LUNC destroyed in the past week.
  • The token's momentum is also fueled by Binance's pause on LUNC withdrawals ahead of the Terra Chain's v2.18 upgrade, which aims to improve network stability, despite the token remaining volatile.