Bitcoin Cash split into incompatible successor chains on November 15, 2020 after the Bitcoin Cash Node and Bitcoin ABC software camps enforced different consensus rules. The last block accepted by both sides was block 661,647, according to contemporaneous reporting; blocks after that point could be evaluated differently depending on which node software a participant ran.
The division turned a scheduled network upgrade into a governance and market-infrastructure event. It forced miners, exchanges, custodians and holders to decide which rule set they would recognize, while service providers made their own decisions about tickers and access.
One shared upgrade, one decisive disagreement
Bitcoin Cash Node’s published specification set the activation condition at a median time past for the preceding 11 blocks of at least Unix timestamp 1605441600, corresponding to 12:00 UTC on November 15, 2020. Its consensus change replaced the existing difficulty-adjustment algorithm with ASERT, short for aserti3-2d.
Bitcoin ABC also supported the difficulty-algorithm change, but its software added a rule directing 8% of each block reward toward infrastructure development. Bitcoin Cash Node omitted that funding rule. Once both implementations were used to validate new blocks, their disagreement was no longer only political: a block acceptable to one rule set could be unacceptable to the other.
The verified fact is the difference in consensus rules. Calling the result a referendum on how open-source development should be financed is interpretation, although the dispute plainly made funding part of protocol governance rather than a voluntary arrangement outside consensus.
Exchanges became naming authorities
No protocol rule determines which branch receives a familiar exchange ticker. Trading venues and custodians make that operational choice.
Kraken had said on November 6, 2020 that it would call the Bitcoin Cash Node asset “Bitcoin Cash” and retain the BCH symbol regardless of the fork’s outcome. It made support for the Bitcoin ABC asset conditional on that network maintaining hashpower equal to at least 10% of the Bitcoin Cash Node network’s hashpower in a reasonably stable way. That 10% figure was Kraken’s listing threshold, not a network consensus rule or a measured share on November 15, 2020.
Poloniex’s fork update said the split occurred at approximately 14:00 UTC on November 15, 2020. The venue assigned BCH to the Bitcoin Cash Node chain and BCHA to the Bitcoin ABC chain, and said customer balances had been distributed under its announced process. Different platforms could apply different names, snapshots and support conditions, so the existence of coins on a chain did not guarantee deposits, withdrawals or trading everywhere.
The fork reached regulated products
The disruption extended beyond crypto-only exchanges. On November 13, 2020, Swiss exchange-traded-product issuer 21Shares said three of its products held Bitcoin Cash exposure: its standalone Bitcoin Cash ETP and two basket products. The issuer had halted primary-market activity in the affected products beginning November 12, 2020 and expected to retain the Bitcoin Cash Node branch, subject to network stability and custodian support.
That record shows why a chain split matters institutionally. An issuer must determine which asset its product tracks, whether its custodian can access both branches and how any minority-chain asset will be handled. Those questions are separate from which software developers believe should carry the Bitcoin Cash name.
What was knowable on November 15, 2020
CoinDesk reported on November 15, 2020 that miners had begun extending the Bitcoin Cash Node side after the last common block and that the ABC side had received no hashpower at its press-time observation. That was a point-in-time condition, not proof that the minority chain could never produce blocks or retain value.
The defensible event-day conclusion is narrower: Bitcoin Cash’s shared ledger history ended, BCHN had the early operational advantage, and service providers were treating it as the presumptive BCH continuation. No price, return, volume or causal market-reaction claim is made here because the reviewed records do not isolate the fork’s effect from continuous trading or broader market conditions.
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