Bitcoin Cash is soaring as traders ready for another hard fork

Markets Insider

Bitcoin cash is up more than 10% Friday.
A hard-fork of the currency is expected May 15, which will form Bitcoin ABC.
Track the price of Bitcoin cash in real-time here.

Bitcoin cash was up more than 10% Friday, continuing its outperformance of other major cryptocurrencies, as a competing hard fork approaches on May 15.

The fourth-largest cryptocurrency, which split from bitcoin in a similar hard fork in 2017, is now up more than 30% in the past week. Bitcoin, by comparison, is up 5% over that time.

Bitcoin ABC, an acronym for Adjustable Blocksize Cap, will increase bitcoin cash's block size to 32 MB, a fourfold increase from the original 8MB and well above bitcoin’s 1MB block size. It’s set to roll out on May 15, the developers have said.

The fork will also remove the Segwit protocol, short for segregated witness, the process by which the number of transactions in a block can be increased by moving certain signature data from transactions to the end of the block.

Bitcoin cash has been accused of misleading investors by piggy-backing off the bitcoin name. While the new cryptocurrency includes the history of the original bitcoin's transactions up until the split, since the fork, the two currencies are unrelated except for their shared history and name. Theoretically, anyone can create a fork from the original bitcoin source code.

The Bitcoin Cash Fork Was a Dangerous Trick

The newly created Bitcoin Cash (BCH) is a rushed spinoff of Bitcoin (BTC), a clonecoin of which there have been many in Bitcoin’s past. Because the name is confusing, many have taken to calling it “Bcash” to avoid buyer confusion.

There have been myriad clonecoins of various types since Bitcoin’s inception. Bitcoin Cash is a style of clone that copies Bitcoin’s codebase along with its blockchain up until a certain point. Normally when new alternative cryptocurrencies are created, developers just clone the code and not the blockchain. But Bitcoin Cash copied Bitcoin’s blockchain as well, which created a situation in which everyone that had one bitcoin suddenly also had one bitcoin cash.

The creation of Bitcoin Cash was an orchestrated scheme, rushed to the point of engendering significant safety risks. Digital currencies just don’t spontaneously appear out of nowhere. The Bitcoin Cash fork was created by a developer that wanted to increase block sizes, with the hypothetical result being more transactions being processed on the blockchain.

This might sound like a good idea, but clonecoins can be incredibly disruptive to risk management and operational demands on digital currency infrastructure companies. The cost to launch a clonecoin is minimal, but the overhead for the ecosystem to actually support it is high. As Bitcoin Cash duplicated Bitcoin, at the time of the fork every bitcoin holder now had coins on another blockchain, and therefore skin in the game. This was a type of psychological experiment to see if people as a group could be tricked into ascribing value to something created from nothing, if they were given it as a gift. This experiment seemed to work, and it put a great deal of pressure on exchanges and wallet providers to support Bitcoin Cash, whereas a new altcoin would largely just be ignored.

Some exchanges such as Coinbase simply said they would not support Bitcoin Cash and urged their users to who felt otherwise to withdraw their coins prior to August 1, when the cryptocurrency forked. I can identify with these exchanges. Having run an exchange myself, I can tell you that supporting a new coin isn’t something you rush into. Customer support teams need to be aware of the complexities and nuances so they can explain them to customers. Systems for processing deposits and withdrawals must be updated. Additional servers need to be spun up and integrated with existing systems. Security auditing and quality assurance testing must run their course. Compliance guidelines and terms of service need to be updated and reviewed by legal teams.

We have always taken a security-first approach to technology here at Blockstream, and commend exchanges for doing likewise. Exchanges are the operational end of Bitcoin infrastructure, with billions of dollars under technical management. In Bitcoin Cash, keys controlling ownership of coins are shared with real Bitcoin investments totaling $50 billion. Sharing those Bitcoin keys with untested software in order to claim a Bitcoin Cash gift is highly risky—maybe too risky.

The Bitcoin Cash chain may survive, but its value will likely dip below $100. It’s currently trading anywhere from $200 to $300 on various exchanges, but this price is artificially inflated due to many exchanges refusing to accept deposits, as well as the Bitcoin Cash blockchain not functioning properly. Bitcoin’s blockchain processes a block of transactions roughly every 10 minutes, but Bitcoin Cash average block times are an hour (sometimes with no blocks for 13 hours). This means that users are having issues with even sending their bitcoin cash to exchanges to sell off.

We can already see a correlation between when Bitcoin Cash transactions are processed and when massive selloffs take place on exchanges. Compound that with the fact that 76% of all bitcoin cash that will ever exist is already mined and waiting to be sold, that there is absolutely no Bitcoin Cash integration or support in the real world, that its codebase is being maintained by a single developer, the long-term prospects of the new cryptocurrency are unclear.

Whatever happens though, Bitcoin Cash’s birth has shown that markets can be manipulated with just a bit of computing power, a participating exchange, and a healthy dose of greed. If you’re running a digital currency exchange or wallet, beware the attack of the clonecoins.

Samson Mow is the chief strategy officer at Blockstream.

Hard fork bitcoin

When people talk about possible changes to how Bitcoin works they sometimes say a particular change would require a hard fork. What does that mean? Can a hard fork cause problems?

Simply put, a so-called hard fork is a change of the Bitcoin protocol that is not backwards-compatible; i.e., older client versions would not accept blocks created by the updated client, considering them invalid. Obviously, this can create a blockchain fork when nodes running the new version create a separate blockchain incompatible with the older software.

For potential future changes that would require a hard fork, see the associated wiki page.

A hardfork is a change to the bitcoin protocol that makes previously invalid blocks/transactions valid, and therefore requires all users to upgrade.

Any alteration to bitcoin which changes the block structure (including block hash), difficulty rules, or increases the set of valid transactions is a hardfork. However, some of these changes can be implemented by having the new transaction appear to older clients as a pay-to-anybody transaction (of a special form), and getting the miners to agree to reject blocks including the pay-to-anybody transaction unless the transaction validates under the new rules. This is known as a softfork.

To date, Bitcoin has never deployed a hardfork, but some altcoins have.

What is 'Hard Fork'

A hard fork (or sometimes hardfork), as it relates to blockchain technology, is a radical change to the protocol that makes previously invalid blocks/transactions valid (or vice-versa). This requires all nodes or users to upgrade to the latest version of the protocol software. Put differently, a hard fork is a permanent divergence from the previous version of the blockchain, and nodes running previous versions will no longer be accepted by the newest version. This essentially creates a fork in the blockchain: one path follows the new, upgraded blockchain, and the other path continues along the old path. Generally, after a short period of time, those on the old chain will realize that their version of the blockchain is outdated or irrelevant and quickly upgrade to the latest version.

On-Chain Governance

Bitcoin Core

Ethereum Classic

BREAKING DOWN 'Hard Fork'

A hard fork can be implemented to correct important security risks found in older versions of the software, to add new functionality, or to reverse transactions (as in the case with the hard fork to reverse the hack on the DAO (decentralized autonomous organization) in the Ethereum blockchain).

A hard fork involves splitting the path of a blockchain by invalidating transactions confirmed by nodes that have not been upgraded to the new version of the protocol software. Following the hack on the DAO, the Ethereum community almost unanimously voted in favor of a hard fork in order to roll back transactions that siphoned off tens of millions of dollars worth of digital currency by an anonymous hacker. The hard fork also allowed DAO token holders to get their ether funds returned to them.

The proposal did not exactly unwind the network’s transaction history. Rather, it relocated the funds tied to The DAO to a newly created smart contract with the single purpose of letting the original owners withdraw them. DAO token holders will be able to withdraw ETH at a rate of approximately 1 ETH to 100 DAO. The extra balance and any ether that remains as a result of the re-entrancy exploit and the splitting mechanism will be withdrawn and distributed by the DAO curators, or individuals selected prior to the collapse of the DAO to provide "failsafe protection" for the organization.

Hard Forks vs. Soft Forks

Hard forks and soft forks are essentially the same thing in that when a cryptocurrency's existing code is changed, an old version remains while a new version is created. However, with a soft fork, only one blockchain will remain valid as users adopt the update. Both forks create a split, but a hard fork creates two blockchains, and a soft fork is meant to result in one.

Hard Fork, Hard-Forking Change

This definition comes from the technical glossary.

Definition

A permanent divergence in the block chain, commonly occurs when non-upgraded nodes canвЂ™t validate blocks created by upgraded nodes that follow newer consensus rules.

Not To Be Confused With

Fork (a regular fork where all nodes follow the same consensus rules, so the fork is resolved once one chain has more proof of work than another)

Soft fork (a temporary divergence in the block chain caused by non-upgraded nodes not following new consensus rules)

Software fork (when one or more developers permanently develops a codebase separately from other developers)

Git fork (when one or more developers temporarily develops a codebase separately from other developers

A Short Guide to Bitcoin Forks

If you have been paying attention to bitcoin at all lately, you may have noticed a lot of talk going on about 'forks'.

Not like the kind you would find on a table, on a blockchain, a fork is a technical event that occurs because diverse participants need to agree on common rules.

At its most basic, a fork is what happens when a blockchain diverges into two potential paths forward — either with regard to a network's transaction history or a new rule in deciding what makes a transaction valid.

As a result, those who use the blockchain have to show support for one choice over the other.

Yet, there are many different types of forks, and the science of studying them is still new. So far, we know some forks resolve on their own, but others, fueled by deep rifts in a community, can cause a network to permanently split, creating two blockchain histories — and two separate currencies.

Along with that, there has also been confusion about the various types of forks, how they get activated and the risks they pose.

To clarify, we've assembled quick rundown on how different forks work.

The basics

Before we get into the classifications, it's worth noting that bitcoin forks already occur quite regularly.

A byproduct of distributed consensus, forks happen anytime two miners find a block at nearly the same time. The ambiguity is resolved when subsequent blocks are added to one, making it the longest chain, while the other block gets "orphaned" (or abandoned) by the network.

But forks also can be willingly introduced to the network. This occurs when developers seek to change the rules the software uses to decide whether a transaction is valid or not.

When a block contains invalid transactions, that block is ignored by the network, and the miner who found that block loses out on a block reward. As such, miners generally want to mine only valid blocks and build on the longest chain.

Following are some of the more common forks and their traits.

What is it? A hard fork is a software upgrade that introduces a new rule to the network that isn't compatible with the older software. You can think of a hard fork as an expansion of the rules. (A new rule that allows block size to be 2MB instead of 1MB would require a hard fork).

What happens? Nodes that continue running the old version of the software will see the new transactions as invalid. So, to switch over to the new chain and to continue to mine valid blocks, all of the nodes in the network need to upgrade to the new rules.

What can go wrong? The problem comes when some sort of political impasse arises, and a portion of the community decides to stick by the old rules no matter what. The hash rate, or network computing power, behind the old chain is irrelevant. What matters is that its data (and ruleset) is still perceived to have value, meaning miners still want to mine a chain and developers still want to support it.

The ethereum DAO hard fork was a perfect case study of how a community can split over rules. Now, we have two blockchains using a variant of the software – ethereum and ethereum classic, both of which boast a different ethos and a different currency.

What is it? A soft fork, by contrast, is any change that's backward compatible. Say, instead of 1MB blocks, a new rule might only allow 500K blocks.

What happens? Non-upgraded nodes will still see the new transactions as valid (500k is less than 1MB in this example). However, if non-upgraded nodes continue to mine blocks, the blocks they mine will be rejected by the upgraded nodes. This is why soft forks need a majority of hash power in the network.

What can go wrong? When a soft fork is supported by only a minority of hash power in the network, it could become the shortest chain and get orphaned by the network. Or, it can act like a hard fork, and one chain can splinter off.

Soft forks have been the most commonly used option to upgrade the bitcoin blockchain so far because it's argued they present a lower risk of splitting the network. Past examples of successful soft forks include software upgrades like BIP 66 (which dealt with signature validation) and P2SH (which altered bitcoin's address formatting).

User-activated soft fork

What is it? A user-activated soft fork (UASF) is a controversial idea that explores how a blockchain might add an upgrade that is not directly supported by those who provide the network's hashing power.

The idea with UASF is that instead of waiting for a threshold of support from mining pools, the power to activate a soft fork goes to the exchanges, wallets and businesses who are running full nodes. (In bitcoin, a full node, even if it is not a mining node, is still responsible for validating blocks.)

What happens? The majority of major exchanges would need to publicly support the change before it could be written into a new version of code. After that, the new software (which has an activation point in the future) gets installed on nodes that want to participate in the soft fork.

What can go wrong? This method requires a much longer lead time to work than a hash-power-triggered soft fork. In fact, it's believed it may take as long as a year or more to write the code and get everyone ready.

Further, if the majority of miners end up not 'falling in line' and activating the new rules, they could use their overwhelming hash power to split the network.

Currently this idea is theoretical and has not been implemented.

The leader in blockchain news, CoinDesk is a media outlet that strives for the highest journalistic standards and abides by a strict set of editorial policies. CoinDesk is an independent operating subsidiary of Digital Currency Group, which invests in cryptocurrencies and blockchain startups.

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Your search engine does not find any satisfactory results for searches. It is too weak. Also, the server of bing is often off

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RYAN RAHSAD BELL literally means

Question on a link

In the search for Anaïs Nin, one of the first few links shows a picture of a man. Why? Since Nin is a woman, I can’t figure out why. Can you show some reason for this? Who is he? If you click on the picture a group of pictures of Nin and no mention of that man. Is it an error?

Repair the Yahoo Search App.

Yahoo Search App from the Google Play Store on my Samsung Galaxy S8+ phone stopped working on May 18, 2018.

I went to the Yahoo Troubleshooting page but the article that said to do a certain 8 steps to fix the problem with Yahoo Services not working and how to fix the problem. Of course they didn't work.

I contacted Samsung thru their Samsung Tutor app on my phone. I gave their Technican access to my phone to see if there was a problem with my phone that stopped the Yahoo Search App from working. He went to Yahoo and I signed in so he could try to fix the Yahoo Search App not working. He also used another phone, installed the app from the Google Play Store to see if the app would do any kind of search thru the app. The Yahoo Search App just wasn't working.

I also had At&t try to help me because I have UVERSE for my internet service. My internet was working perfectly. Their Technical Support team member checked the Yahoo Search App and it wouldn't work for him either.

We can go to www.yahoo.com and search for any topic or website. It's just the Yahoo Search App that won't allow anyone to do web searches at all.

I let Google know that the Yahoo Search App installed from their Google Play Store had completely stopped working on May 18, 2018.

I told them that Yahoo has made sure that their Yahoo members can't contact them about anything.

I noticed that right after I accepted the agreement that said Oath had joined with Verizon I started having the problem with the Yahoo Search App.
No matter what I search for or website thru the Yahoo Search App it says the following after I searched for
www.att.com.

WEBPAGE NOT AVAILABLE
This webpage at gttp://r.search.yahoo.com/_ylt=A0geJGq8BbkrgALEMMITE5jylu=X3oDMTEzcTjdWsyBGNvbG8DYmyxBHBvcwMxBHZ0aWQDTkFQUEMwxzEEc2VjA3NylRo=10/Ru=https%3a%2f%2fwww.att.att.com%2f/Rk=2/Es=plkGNRAB61_XKqFjTEN7J8cXA-
could not be loaded because:
net::ERR_CLEARTEXT_NOT_PERMITTED

I tried to search for things like www.homedepot.com. The same thing happened. It would say WEBPAGE NOT AVAILABLE. The only thing that changed were all the upper and lower case letters, numbers and symbols.
Then it would again say
could not be loaded because:
net::ERR_CLEARTEXT_NOT_PERMITTED

This is the same thing that happened when Samsung and At&t tried to do any kind of searches thru the Yahoo Search App.

Yahoo needs to fix the problem with their app.

Yahoo Search App from the Google Play Store on my Samsung Galaxy S8+ phone stopped working on May 18, 2018.

I went to the Yahoo Troubleshooting page but the article that said to do a certain 8 steps to fix the problem with Yahoo Services not working and how to fix the problem. Of course they didn't work.

2018 Recent and Upcoming Bitcoin Hard Forks: What You Need to Know

A Bitcoin (hard) fork is a method for developers to update and alter Bitcoin’s software. Once Bitcoin reaches a certain block height, miners can begin mining the new currency’s blocks, creating a new chain entirely and a currency to go with it.

The major Bitcoin forks occurred at the end of 2017 and January 2018.

A Bitcoin fork is generally safe to claim as long as it has Replay Protection. However, the fork could still have no value and may not be worth your time to claim.

If you thought Bitcoin Cash, Bitcoin Gold, and Bitcoin Diamond were excessive, we’ve got a surprise for you: Bitcoin has 7 forks lined up going into the new year.

That’s right–six shiny new mints bearing Bitcoin’s name. Super Bitcoin, Lightning Bitcoin, Bitcoin God (no joke) Bitcoin Uranium, Bitcoin Cash Plus, Bitcoin Silver, and Bitcoin Atom are slated to launch throughout the holidays and going into the New Year. This will double the number of forked currencies within the a couple of months, leaving the market with 8 total Bitcoin derivatives to choose from.

For those that don’t know, a hard fork is a method for developers to update and alter Bitcoin’s software. Once Bitcoin reaches a certain block height, miners switch from Bitcoin’s core software to the fork’s version. After this split, miners begin mining the new currency’s blocks, creating a new chain entirely and a currency to go with it.

Bitcoin Cash was the first hard fork to occur on Bitcoin’s blockchain, followed by Bitcoin Gold and Bitcoin Diamond. As you can probably imagine, hard forks have become a hot topic within the crypto community. Many believe that they are necessary for improving the network and solving Bitcoin’s scalability issue, as with Bitcoin Cash. Others have criticized them as money making schemes, as anyone holding Bitcoin at the time of a fork receives an equal share of the new currency.

Whether you love ‘em or hate ‘em, it’s important to understand what each fork is and what it wants to accomplish, and given the number coming up, there’s a lot of information to digest.

That’s why we compiled info on each fork into these manageable chunks, to make that research a bit easier to swallow. Time to dig in.

Super Bitcoin (SBTC)

The first of our new forks, Super Bitcoin, is estimated for December 12th at block 498888 with a circulating supply of 21,210,000 SBTC. Of this supply, 210,000 will be pre-mined.

As its name suggests, Super Bitcoin is like Bitcoin on steroids. Its team picked through what they like best about the current Bitcoin protocol and introduced some added features that they believe will buff-up the network. Like Bitcoin Cash, it will increase block sizes from 1MB to 8MB to improve scalability. It will run Bitcoin’s lightning network, and it plans to support anonymous payments with a zero-knowledge proof by May of next year.

Funnily enough, Super Bitcoin’s distinguishing feature isn’t even Bitcoin-related–it comes from Ethereum. The team wants to implement Ethereum-inspired smart contracts into Super Bitcoin’s program, which will allow third parties to build decentralized apps on the new protocol.

This is all the information as presented on Super Bitcoin’s website. There’s no white paper, but there is a developer’s reference “to provide technical details and API information to help you start to build Bitcoin-based applications.”

The team includes INBlockchain Inc. founder Li Xiao Lai , Link Capital founder JaiPeng Lin , and Ranger Shi. With their software upgrades, they hope to “revitalize [bitcoin’s] dominance,” which they believe has “lost a tremendous share of the cryptocurrency market.” Oh yeah, and they want to “Make Bitcoin Great Again.”

Bitcoin Platinum (BTP)

We included Bitcoin Platinum and its “specifications” in an earlier draft of this article, but since then, it’s been exposed as a scam.

Apparently, the project was spearheaded by a South Korean teenager with the purpose of making money by shorting Bitcoin. The teenager was hoping to profit off of Bitcoin’s short-term price trend, thinking that introducing a new fork might help him to do so.

In an admission of guilt, the teenager took to Twitter to apologize for the scam.

While we don’t approve of such fraudulent practices, you’ve gotta hand it to the kid–it’s a more creative way to make money than a bake sale.

Lightning Bitcoin (LBTC)

Back to the allegedly real forks. Our actual second fork should come on or around December 23rd at block 499,999, with a main-net launch the following week.

The purpose behind LBTC is to provide, that’s right, lightning fast payments. To do this, the currency will expand its block size to 2MB and sport a three-second block time. The team hopes that these additions will help Lightning Bitcoin processes anywhere from 1,000 to 10,000 transactions per second.

Lightning Bitcoin is also making its mark on the fork scene by abandoning Bitcoin’s proof of work consensus mechanism. Instead, it will opt for a delegated proof of stake system similar to Ark’s. In addition, LBTC will join SBTC by building smart contracts on its blockchain. These innovations will not be active upon the main net launch, but the team plans to have them developed by Q3 of 2018.

As of writing, the coin’s website is inactive. There’s also little information on the team, with Jack Zhang, the project’s Chinese community leader, as the only verified member. Supposedly, though, Lightning Bitcoin does have exchange support from CEX.io, BTCC, gate.io, and Coldlar wallet.

Bitcoin God (GOD)

Yes, it’s called Bitcoin GOD, and yes, its trading abbreviation is actually GOD. This third and ungodly fork will come at block 501225, which gives it a tentative date of December 25th. GOD’s creator, Chandler Guo, targeted this date “ to be symbolic of me giving candy to all Bitcoin Holders.” We can’t make this up–those are his own words.

Bitcoin God (GOD) will be forked off the main bitcoin chain at the block height of 501225, which will happen on December 25h to be symbolic of me giving candy to all Bitcoin Holders. The total amount will be 21 million. No pre-mine. pic.twitter.com/4T2lwojYTr

— Chandler Guo (@ChandlerGuo) December 4, 2017

So far, Bitcoin God is the blackhorse of our group. Little is known about it besides what was shared in Chandler Guo’s tweet and a WeChat screenshot. Besides the anticipated date, we only know that there will be a circulating supply of 21,000,000 GOD and that the coin will have no premine.

Bitcoin Uranium (BUM)

Can we stop to appreciate this fork’s trading ticker, for a second? It’s like a physical reminder about how absurd all of these forks are getting.

Anyway, back to business. Like Bitcoin God, Bitcoin Uranium has no website, and all of the information about the coin comes from an October 25th post on Bitcoin Talk. The exact blockheight for the fork is yet to be determined, but a rough date sets the update for December 31st. The 21,000,000 circulating supply will have no premine.

Judging by what we know about Bitcoin Uranium, its goals are in line with Bitcoin Platinum’s own. Like BTP, it will be ASIC resistant, but its proof of work will use CPUs as well as GPUs. Unlike its counterpart, though, it will decrease its block time even further to 1 minute and will stick with Segwit as opposed to Segwit 2x.

It’s also planning a number of features that will distinguish it from the rest of the pack. For starters, Bitcoin Uranium’s block rewards will be halved every 450 days. In the foreseeable future, it hopes to implement anonymous addresses, as well.

Currently, there’s no verifiable information about Bitcoin Uranium’s team, as the Bitcoin Talk forum only includes a link to the project’s Twitter and a GitHub for its mining commits.

Bitcoin Cash Plus (BCP)

Taking a note from Bitcoin Platinum’s playbook, Bitcoin Cash Plus also wants to fulfill the original promise of Bitcoin as “Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash.” Thankfully, Bitcoin Cash Plus actually has a website, but there’s no information about coin supply. It does, however, say that the update is scheduled for block 501407, which will make it our first fork of the New Year on January 2nd.

In line with some of the other forks, it utilizes the Equihash algorithm to prevent mining centralization with ASIC hardware, giving preference to GPU mining instead. It also offers on-chain-scalability with 8MB blocks, same as Super Bitcoin.

Unlike the other forks, it makes use of Bitcoin Cash’s Emergency Difficulty Adjustment. This allows miners to easily switch between the BTC and BCP networks, protecting Bitcoin Cash Plus from hashing fluctuations by allowing it to decrease mining difficulty under emergency circumstances.

So far, there’s no information regarding the team, but the website says this “[will] be updated soon.” For now, the project’s practically inactive GitHub, Twitter, and Facebook are all we have.

Bitcoin Silver (BTCS)

If you Google Bitcoin Silver, the second result will give you a website that you can’t actually access. Seeing as the website is down, another Bitcoin Talk forum will have to do for our review.

According to the October 24th forum, the fork is tentatively planned for some time in December, but the actual block height for the update is to be determined. We do know that there will be a circulating supply of, you guessed it, 21,000,000 with a pre-mine.

Bitcoin Silver is joining the GPU revolution with its Equihash algorithm, so as with BUM, BTP, and BCP, it will not allow ASIC mining. With a 1MB block size and Segwit activated, it will have many of Bitcoin’s own trimmings, but along with ASIC-resistance, its impressive 30 second block time will distinguish it from its parent currency.

Yet again, we have no clear information about the team or how they plan to implement these changes.

Bitcoin Atom (BCA)

We’ve added Bitcoin Atom to this list after-the-fact. News of the fork just came to light, and as such, we wanted to keep the info on here updated.

According to its website, Bitcoin Atom is an “evolved Bitcoin with atomic swaps and lightning network.” As this raison d’être suggests, atomic swaps and lightning network are intrinsic to Bitcoin Atomic’s design. As detailed in the project’s Bitcoin Talk forum, “Atomic Swaps (AS), currently implemented via HTLCs on-chain and potentially via Lightning Network (LN) off-chain, bring an ability to swap assets directly between blockchains without any intermediaries involved. This ability is called atomic cross-chain trading, and we propose the Bitcoin Atom’s support for it at its core, by bringing AS API and a set of cross-chain trading utilities into the original Bitcoin core software and forking it into BCA.” The team believes that these swaps will usher in a new era of decentralization to cryptocurrencies, allowing completely trustless, peer-to-peer exchanging without the need for any third party.

In addition, Bitcoin Atom will operate using a hybrid proof of work and proof of stake distributed consensus mechanism. This system, the team holds, will secure the currency against mining attacks and concentration of network power.

There’s no rough date for Bitcoin Atom’s birth into the crypto world, as the fork has not been scheduled for a specific block height yet, but it should come some time in January. Per tradition, there will be a 21,000,000 supply. The team has not revealed whether or not there will be a premine.

What Should We Think of All This?

One of the key takeaways from these forks is their similarities. At their core, BUM, BCP, and BTCS are all trying to solve Bitcoin’s mining centralization by employing the Equihash algorithm. All of them will integrate replay protection, and as far as this research suggests, all of them will implement Segwit. These comparisons exclude Bitcoin God, because we don’t know enough about its development to detail its specifications.

These technological redundancies are not the only similarities of interest, though. If we look at the Bitcoin Talk forums for BTCS and BUM, for instance, they all included copy and pasted information about the coin’s goals and purpose. You can see this at the top of each forum with its subheadings, and you can see it at the bottom under each coin’s FAQs. What’s more, each forum was posted within a day of the other two: BTCS on the 24th of October, BUM and BTP on the 25th within the same hour. And each one bears some form of Trump’s “Make America Great Again” slogan, as if in uniform echo from shouting down the same cultural well.

In my opinion, the copy-cat nature of these forums and the intervals between their postings has me leary. Couple this with the lack of clear information these projects give, and I’m downright conspiratorial about all these forks. Bitcoin Platinum has already been exposed as a scam, and I wouldn’t be surprised if a few more of these forks were busted, as well. Super Bitcoin is the only fork that provides a team (minus Bitcoin God, with its one-man team of Chandler Guo), and on that note, only three of the proposed currencies have actual websites (LBTC, SBTC, BCP).

All of these forks promise an airdrop of their currency into the wallets of Bitcoin holders, but I’m still unclear as to where you need to hold your Bitcoin to receive any of these forked currencies.

Below you’ll find a comparison table with each coin’s specifications. Take my opinion with a grain of salt, but I would tread carefully around these forks until we’re given more detailed information. These forks could mean a Christmas season full of goodies, but until I know my stockings won’t be stuffed full of coal, I’m approaching these forks with care.

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What can I do to prevent this in the future?

If you are on a personal connection, like at home, you can run an anti-virus scan on your device to make sure it is not infected with malware.

If you are at an office or shared network, you can ask the network administrator to run a scan across the network looking for misconfigured or infected devices.

Cloudflare Ray ID: 422acbfb825d8ef7 • Your IP : 185.87.51.142 • Performance & security by Cloudflare

суббота, 23 июня 2018 г.

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