Much like the Altcoin fad of a few years ago, Forking Bitcoin is the new hotness. While some offer potentially interesting features, others appear to be so much me-too. If you do hold bitcoin, you may be in for a quick bump, as most if not all forks leave you with an equivalent amount on each blockchain. Take a look and enjoy your favorite tulip color. From news.bitcoin.com:
Super Bitcoin (SBTC) is planned to fork at block 498888, and we’re already seeing SBTC futures reach over 0.13 BTC
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Bitcoin Platinum (BTP) plans to fork at block 498533 on December 12. It is said that BTP is GPU-mining-friendly with no pre-mine, and that it will adhere to the Segwit2x solution.
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Lightning Bitcoin (LBTC) will fork at block 499999. It will be the first Bitcoin-forked coin to adopt the delegated Proof-of-Stake mechanism.
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Bitcoin God (GOD). Blockchain angel investor Chandler Guo announced his forking of Bitcoin on the upcoming Christmas Day.
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Bitcoin Cash Plus (BCP). BCP will fork at block 501407 on or around January 2, 2018. It will adopt the Equihash mining algorithm.
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Bitcoin Uranium(BUM). BUM will occur in December. It allows GPU and CPU mining and does not sport a pre-mine.
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Bitcoin Silver(BTSI). BTSI will fork some time in December, but block is still not decided. It changes Bitcoin’s proof-of-work algorithm from SHA256 to Equihash.
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Bitcoin X (block to be decided). It has 210 billion in total and will be distributed to bitcoin holders on the rate of 1BTC=10000 Bitcoin X.
The article briefly discusses exchange and wallet support, and some tools to split your coins.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 10 2017, @04:19PM (2 children)
These new waves of forks seem to be largely coming from or connected to the Chinese markets, whereas the altcoins seemed to be mostly western. It may have to do with increasing regulatory pressure in the East or it may just be the large mining pools wanting more control.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Sunday December 10 2017, @07:07PM
photo on https://qz.com/1053799/chinas-bitmain-dominates-bitcoin-mining-now-it-wants-to-cash-in-on-artificial-intelligence/ [qz.com]
The Antminer S9 isn't very big.
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 11 2017, @09:34AM
They actually seem to be designed to discredit the Bitcoin Cash fork by association.
Several of the forks have been scammy: including linking to Bitcoin stealing wallets on their website.
https://www.cryptocoinsnews.com/bitcoin-gold-wallet-scam-nets-fraudsters-3-2-million-after-stealing-users-private-keys/ [cryptocoinsnews.com]
(Score: 2) by looorg on Sunday December 10 2017, @04:36PM (5 children)
So I give them "real" bitcoins and they give me some knock-off that might be worth something some day. Sure sounds like an awesome deal. Don't you have a bridge to sell to me to ?
(Score: 2) by fishybell on Sunday December 10 2017, @05:21PM (3 children)
No, but rather if you have bitcoins, after the split(s) you'll have an equal number of bitcoins and junk coins.
With the split of bitcoin cash I traded my bitcoin cash for real bitcoins, effectively meaning the split just gave me more bitcoins.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Sunday December 10 2017, @05:23PM (2 children)
How big was your gain from that? For example, 1.1x.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by fishybell on Sunday December 10 2017, @05:58PM (1 child)
I traded 1.477 bitcoin cash for 0.129 bitcoin.
I went from 1.477 bitcoin to 1.606.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Sunday December 10 2017, @06:09PM
1.087x then. Or over 2 grand at today's price.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 10 2017, @05:23PM
Kind of. They are forks of the bitcoin blockchain, usually with difference in the mining or verification systems. As they are a fork of the existing blockchain, if you possess the keys that control a certain botcoin, you also control the coin on the forked chain, however you may not be able access the forked coins because your wallet/provider or because of a lack of technical knowledge. Therefore various exchanges and wallet providers, and often the forkers themselves provide tools or services to allow you to claim or "split" you coins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 10 2017, @04:39PM (3 children)
Some alts have some usability, most of the others not so much.
Now with these bitcoin forks you get the overhead of the "Bitcoin" blockchain, which is about 150GB/fork...with no extra benefit over a normal alt. BCC/BCH provided some novelty over Bitcoin (no problem with the politics around bitcoin block size and so).
The only things these forks will do is pull money out of clueless people, money grab... that's what these forks are.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 10 2017, @10:12PM
If no one ends up using it, then yea. The hope some of the marketplace activity will spill over to these. Why? Well same reason folks use alt chains - for various reasons.
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Monday December 11 2017, @02:35PM (1 child)
It also seems as if they will inflate the money supply. Bitcoin's limited in issue, it was defined to be anti-inflationary, so how do those with influence get around that - they simply create alternatives, and persuade people to use those alternatives too. There may not be intrinsic fungibility, but apart from that, it's hard not to see this is inflationary.
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Monday December 11 2017, @03:10PM
https://www.silverdoctors.com/gold/gold-news/peter-schiff-the-fiat-currency-crisis-will-include-bitcoin-and-the-cryptocurrenies/
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 10 2017, @09:56PM
Only Bitcoin Gold can vanquish the pretender forks ;-).
Mmmmmm. Equihash...