Bitcoin Has Changed More Than You Think: What Forks Mean for BTC’s Security and “Original” Bitcoin

• Bitcoin kept SHA256d while major upgrades changed transaction and scripting rules.
• Bitcoin Cash split at block 478,558 on August 1, 2017, but retained SHA256d mining.
• Bitcoin Gold adopted Equihash, while Bitcoin Diamond moved to the X13 algorithm

A renewed dispute among prominent Bitcoin voices has reopened a question that has followed the network since its major 2017 splits. The argument is not whether the protocol changed. Several upgrades have altered transaction handling, scripting, and validation without replacing its mining algorithm.

Instead, the dispute concerns which changes preserve Bitcoin’s identity and which create separate chains with different security assumptions. Mr. Hodl challenged claims that 2017-era UTXO forks all retained the original network’s SHA-256 mining system.

He said Bitcoin Cash and Bitcoin SV kept SHA256d, while several other …

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