What is Bytecoin [BCN]

Bytecoin is a cryptonote-based coin that was released in 2014 by the developers behind the cryptonote protocol. CryptoNote is an application layer protocol, which is used to build several decentralized digital currencies, focusing on privacy and anonymity.

Bytecoin was the first of many coins released by that developer team, which is all part of the same group that includes Minergate, HitBTC, and Changelly.

What started as a tremendous contribution to the open source crypto community (cryptonote protocol), quickly gave way to greed and what many call the greatest scam in crypto history, and continues today as a highly profitable, possibly unethical, but legitimate businesses.

Bytecoin is a privacy-based payment cryptocurrency that is mineable by CPU and GPU. It was released in 2014 with false marketing that claimed it had been highly used on the dark web for the prior two years. Its whitepapers were forged with false dates to make it seem like it had been released in 2012. This was important because at the time, as 82% of the coins had been pre-mined by the development team, who wanted to hide that fact. They released several other forked coins that were slight variations, such as FantomCoin, QuazarCoin, Monte Verde, HoneyPenny, and Boolberry.

The final forked coin was called bitmonero, which used ring signatures for privacy.

The idea behind ring signatures is that the when someone signs a transaction or a document, their signature is grouped together with other signatures. This creates a group of users who are all equally likely to have actually signed the transaction, making it impossible to track the original sender. Bitmonero was such a hit, the community took it over from the original developers and made it their own, providing more ethical and fair use. It was renamed Monero and took on a life of its own.

After that, the original Bytecoin developers began attacking Monero on forums, first claiming their coin was stolen (even though it is open source, and anyone can use it). Then they created a website providing step by step instructions on how to fork a cryptonote-based coin to water down Monero’s rising momentum, hoping more copycats would emerge.

Bytecoin is the flagship currency of a closed source software and mining service called Minergate. It is the easiest way to get into crypto mining, requiring no complicated setup. A simple install, and their software works on any Windows or Linux machine.

The coins you have to choose from? You guessed it, all the coins the Bytecoin developers worked on that no one has ever heard of, and a few standard coins (Bitcoin, Ethereum, and others) that are in top demand.

In addition, they created something called merged mining, where you could mine Monero and those hashes would count double, and you could get Bytecoin or DigitalNote (XDN) at the same time. The rate of return using Minergate is just a fraction of what the same hardware can achieve using other software, sparking rage amongst its users that Minergate is stealing their own users’ hashrates.

The controversy continues without an end in sight, but the fact of the matter is, for four years now, Bytecoin has been at the center of a highly profitable chain of businesses, run by some very interesting people. Changelly is a fiat to crypto company based in the UK. HitBTC is one of the largest exchanges, despite their awful customer service and outrageous fees compared to other exchanges. Minergate has a ton of users, and provides the easiest entry into crypto, mining bar none.

Bytecoin itself, as a currency, was essentially next to worthless until January 2018, when it reached an all-time high of $0.01 USD. With a circulating supply of over 184,000,000,000, every little bit adds up. It is currently ranked in the top 30 coins by market cap, with just over $575,000,000 dollars as of July 23rd, 2018 with a value of $0.003 per coin, or 41 Satoshis. Despite being listed on Binance and OkEx, it should not come as a surprise that 63% of the daily volume is coming from HitBTC where it is likely being manipulated, given all the other unethical traits that have shrouded this coin since its inception.

Interesting Facts:

● It is suspected that the developers have used fake accounts to mimic users, making outrageous claims such as Bytecoin is actually Satoshi Nakamoto’s 2nd project.

● In an attempt to add further credibility, they bought the BitcoinTalk account of a well-known authority on in-game currencies, OracionSeis.

● Despite having been around for 4 years, Coinmarketcap only shows them as having 10 exchanges, while the majority of other coins of similar market cap (even much younger projects) have 3 to 4 times that amount. For example, 0x was created at the end of 2016 and is listed on 34 exchanges. This suggests exchanges that have stricter requirements (other than taking a large sum of money for a listing like Binance) won’t have anything to do with Bytecoin.

● There are over 30 cryptonote-based coins, not all of which are from the original Bytecoin development team. This is a tribute to just how good that protocol actually is.

● HitBTC is the currently ranked 13th largest exchange in the world (according to Coinmarketcap) by total daily volume.

Bytecoin’s History: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=740112.0
Additional proof linking Bytecoin, HitBTC, Changelly, and Minergate: https://monero.stackexchange.com/questions/2930/which-entities-are-related-to-bytecoin-and-minergate
Website: https://bytecoin.org/
Whitepaper: https://bytecoin.org/about/technical-documentation
Coinmarketcap: https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/bytecoin-bcn/