What is Bitcoin SV? Bitcoin SV, or BSV, is a proof-of-work cryptocurrency and public blockchain that emerged from a Bitcoin Cash hard fork on 15 November 2018. Its name means “Satoshi Vision,” reflecting the project’s aim to preserve Bitcoin’s original transaction model while scaling through larger blocks, low fees, and extensive on-chain data capacity.
Core technology and blockchain architecture
BSV uses Bitcoin’s unspent transaction output, or UTXO, model. Transactions spend previously created outputs and generate new ones, allowing ownership to be verified through cryptographic signatures. The network also uses Bitcoin Script, which supports payment conditions such as multisignature transactions, time locks, token issuance, and other programmable rules.
A defining feature is the large-block approach. The Genesis upgrade activated on 4 February 2020 at block height 620,538. It removed a fixed protocol block-size cap, relaxed transaction and script restrictions, restored previously disabled opcodes, and increased the maximum transaction size to 1 GB. Block capacity remains subject to miner configuration, hardware, storage, bandwidth, and node software.
Teranode is the project’s modular scaling architecture. It separates functions such as transaction validation, block processing, and block assembly into horizontally scalable services. Teranode testing reported sustained throughput above 1 million transactions per second, although that figure describes infrastructure testing rather than guaranteed performance across the public mainnet.
Primary use cases
The network is designed for high-volume payments, micropayments, machine-to-machine transactions, and pay-per-use services. Its low-fee model is intended to support transactions that may be too small to process economically on lower-capacity networks.
Other promoted applications include data timestamping, document verification, supply-chain records, provenance tracking, tokenization, digital identity, and enterprise recordkeeping. Token protocols can represent assets such as loyalty points, tickets, in-game items, or stable-value instruments. These applications remain dependent on actual adoption by developers, businesses, infrastructure providers, and users.
Who is behind Bitcoin SV and where is it based?
Bitcoin SV was created by the group supporting the Bitcoin Cash split in November 2018. The project became associated with Craig S. Wright, nChain, Calvin Ayre’s CoinGeek businesses, TAAL, and Jimmy Nguyen. Wright was associated with nChain and was a prominent BSV advocate, but the High Court of England and Wales ruled on 20 May 2024 that he was not Satoshi Nakamoto, did not author the Bitcoin white paper, and did not create Bitcoin or its initial software.
nChain has been a major research and development contributor, while Steve Shadders was associated with its technical work on BSV infrastructure. Jimmy Nguyen served as the founding president of the Bitcoin Association before announcing his departure from that role in 2022. The project does not have a single publicly confirmed founder in the same manner as a conventional company.
The BSV Association is the principal public-facing industry organization. It is a Switzerland-based nonprofit association, legally organized as a Swiss Verein, with headquarters associated with Zug. Its initial voting members included CoinGeek, nChain, TAAL Distributed Information Technologies, and Jimmy Nguyen. The Association promotes the ecosystem but does not legally own or centrally control the decentralized blockchain.
Consensus and network security
BSV uses SHA-256 proof of work. Miners compete to find valid block hashes, and nodes verify transactions, block rules, and accumulated work. The chain with the greatest accumulated proof of work is treated as authoritative under Nakamoto consensus.
Security depends on mining hardware, electricity costs, block subsidies, transaction fees, and the distribution of hash power. Large blocks can increase bandwidth, storage, and validation requirements, which may raise infrastructure costs and create pressure toward larger operators.
Tokenomics and market position
The maximum supply is 21 million BSV. CoinStats reported 20,090,863 BSV in circulation and a total supply of 20,090,959 BSV. New coins enter circulation through mining, with the block subsidy halving every approximately 210,000 blocks. The current block subsidy is 3.125 BSV following the 2024 halving, down from the original 50 BSV reward.
The supply schedule is declining rather than perpetually inflationary. As subsidies decrease, transaction fees are expected to become more important to miners. CoinStats recorded a price of $19.81, a 24h change of -1.03%, market capitalization of $397.96M (rank #182), and 24h volume of $11.56M. The all-time high was $489.75, the current price is 95.96% below it.
Ecosystem, advantages, and roadmap
The ecosystem includes nChain, CoinGeek, TAAL, the BSV Association, miners, exchanges, wallets, and application developers. Its main differentiators are large-scale base-layer capacity, low-cost micropayments, on-chain data, Bitcoin Script functionality, proof-of-work security, and a stable-protocol philosophy.
Development in 2025 and 2026 has focused on Teranode production preparation, node integration, migration guidance, and infrastructure stability. A public Teranode release was announced in October 2025. The Chronicle upgrade activated at block height 943,816 on 7 April 2026, restoring additional opcodes and increasing the maximum consensus script-number length from 750 KB to 32 MB.