ADSactly Spotlight on Cryptocoins - Bitcoin Private/BTCP -- 13th feature "private" coins
Spotlight on Cryptocoins -- Bitcoin Private/BTCP -- 13th feature "private" coins
In this series of articles I want to put a spotlight on a specific cryptocurrency and write about the details in all these aspects:
Aim of the currency
Technical details
Market position
Forecast
The cryptocurrency in focus currently will be one of the so-called "private" coins. Coins that create the possibility to be more or less in private while doing transactions. How private you are is one of the main questions to be answered in this articles.
In this 13th article of the series, the spotlight will be on Bitcoin Private.
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Aim of the Currency
What is this currency about? What does it do differently than the rest?
Where is the unique selling point and at what audience is this coin targeted?
All that questions and more will be answered in the following paragraph.
Bitcoin Private or BTCP is a quite new cryptocurrency that features some quite unique properties.
It is built up as a Hardfork of two different cryptocurrencies, Bitcoin and ZClassic.
The Hardfork has taken place on February 28th, 2018 and Mainnet went live on March 3rd.
These are the block numbers at the time the snapshot has been taken
So, if you had any BTC or ZCL in your wallets you may be able to receive the new BTCP as well. The ratio has been 1:1.
BTCP is a PoW (Proof of Work) Coin, which means that this coin can be mined.
The privacy mechanism has been taken over from ZCL, both currencies are using zK-Snarks to encrypt the details of a transaction including sender, receiver and amount.
Technical Details
BTCP has Full-Node wallets that support Linux, Mac, and Windows.
It also features the possibility to create a paper wallet and for usage on a mobile device, you can use the coinomi wallet.
Bitcoin Private is a PoW coin utilizing the Equihash algorithm, just like ZCash or Zencash.
This algorithm can be run very well on modern graphics cards and is quite resistant to ASIC computation. This helps secure the coin against centralization.
There is no master node-mechanism in place.
The current number of circulating coins is a high 20.435.504 BTCP, this is ultimately the result of the chosen strategy to fork-merge two blockchains. This means that after the merge only 700,000 BTCP where left to be mined, this number has already been reduced by 135,000 in the last months.
The team around BTCP is currently coming up with ideas how to evade low hash rates after the last coin has been mined, those ideas include for instance the removal of unmoved coins from before the fork.
Total supply is 21 million.
The block Time is 2,5 Minutes with a 2Mb block-size, making it as fast as Bitcoin Gold but features the double block-size.
Privacy of transaction has two different levels of Bitcoin Private.
- Transparent is like the names say a transaction that is completely public.
- Shielded uses zk-SNARKs to encrypt the data, making it impossible for anyone not part of the transaction to see the details.
Market Position
At the time of writing this article (05/28/2018), BTCP is placed 37th in market capitalization, with the total value of $460.160.605 USD. The 24h Volume was $1.057.310 USD which is a rather high number compared to the last month.
The last weeks and months have been quite a bumpy ride with cryptocurrencies, the trend for BTCP is no different and goes sideways currently. The all-time high was reached on March 12th with over 80 USD per BTCP.
Since then the price has been losing ground, stopped by two short pumps in middle of April, in the recent decline of cryptos that is going on since a week or so BTCP is really doing very well in comparison to some other major cryptocurrencies and has gained 9 places in the TOP 50 List (from Rank 46 to Rank 37).
So while others have declined quite heavily in price BTCP has been even gaining at price.
Currently, BTCP is traded for 22,51 USD, having a plus of 7.77% today.
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Forecast
Just like all the other private coins Bitcoin Private for sure has a valid point in trying to keep the privacy of the sender and receiver.
BTCP is not listed on many exchanges currently, the biggest exchanges are currently HitBTC, Nanex and Tradesatoshi (measured on volume)
Technically this coin goes new ways having merged two chains together into one, but as we have seen this did not only bring positive results.
BTCP is basing most of its developments on the help of a huge team of open source contributors and it seems it helps a lot in having a good velocity within the project.
In April they already have delivered 4 functional updates and are about to bring on a major refactor task. This Task will be the change of the codebase from ZEC code (3 years behind current Bitcoin core) to the current Bitcoin codebase.
The main and most important functional enhancements on the short-term roadmap are the following:
- TOR integration
- Merchant platform
- Simplify mining (one-click Miner)
- Finish the rebase of BTCP and release new core code
Following the roadmap a bit further there are very interesting topics like developing a new proof of work algorithm or turning the shielded transactions into the default for the whole blockchain.
If the team can deliver these new features and software like they are planning to, the price for sure will go up as well.
For instance, the TOR integration would for sure elevate the security and privacy to a new level and increase the interest of the market in BTCP heavily.
The complete Roadmap of the coin can be found here.
Conclusion
BTCP features normal transparent transactions as well as shielded and therefore private ones.
The team puts the focus on fair distribution, having had no premine and no founders reward included.
The 1:1 distribution within the merged fork with BTC and ZCL has, on the other hand, already reduced free, undistributed and therefore mineable coins to 600k.
The team has proven to be very capable of setting new functionalities to production. Currently, the core team is consisting of over 70 developers and engineers.
On Github, there are already 369 different people having developed code for Bitcoin Private and in total over 11,000 commits of new code have been made.
Last but not least there are also some drawbacks and they should not be unmentioned:
- Proof-of-Work coin can be seen as a waste of electrical energy.
- Privacy of transaction has been also viewed with criticism.
- The coin is driven by the community, which also can be seen as inflexible and not always rational.
Authored by: @jedigeiss
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Do you guys think banks are going to want to use a public blochain so everyone can see there balance sheet, and competitors can see everything they're doin? hahahahahaha NOPE They need PRIVACY. NEVER EVER follow the sheep, when the media is telling you that privacy coins will be banned and regulated out of existance it's a good clue to buy as much as you can! The most important use case in crypto is PRIVACY!!! Everything else is pixy dust. :)
I'm surprised you're the only person to mention that so far in this thread. I could totally see some proposed regulations being thrown around and maybe something is temporarily passed, but as we move into more crypto adoption it's clear that we need privacy coins to exist for exactly that reason (businesses).
Yes, privacy coins will likely be the best investment as we move in to the war on privacy. Get them while you can :)
Now opinions on Bitcoin Private divided into two camps: some consider this currency another "dummy", the second predict a huge growth.Personally, I think the coin has all the prospects: an experienced team of developers, innovative solutions for anonymity of the network, high speed of transactions and interest among miners and traders.
John McAfee is predicting that Bitcoin Private will hit $200 by the end of July.
I don't own Bitcoin Private, but think there is a place for privacy coins in every investor's portfolio. I personally like ZenCash the best. Good luck.
I personally don’t think Bitcoin Private will make it too far. I understand their mission, but certain things concern me regarding the privacy. The implementation of the Tor browser is automatically a red flag due to the government being against fully privacy. The government won’t allow this due to a simple reason such as illicit activities taking place with Bitcoin Private. They already havd to focus on illicit activity with Bitcoin... Bitcoin Private would just be a lot more stressful for the government to regulate.
Nicely done on summarizing the coin by the way 👌
You should just sell your crypto and join the government and there fiat ponzi scheme :)
Lol
Thanks for taking your time to share this Educating write-up with us. Way to go Boss. We believe in you.@adsactly
@adsactly Privacy coins will be regulated out of existence. They allow criminal activity and tax evasion. BitCoin is private enough. We need to get governments regulating crypto to stabilise it "legally" so they don't try to wipe it all out. One thing they won't touch is privacy coins. I know cash is private but only semi private. Cash is more like Bitcoin it is private until some people with a lot of authority go digging then they know it all. So that won't fly. I took my investments out of privacy coins even though I absolutely love the Monera project and the idea behind these coins. But sadly I can't see them being allowed. Yes you could use them outside the law easily but I think that would end up being too risky as the majority will stick to Bit Coin.
Don't follow the sheep to the slaughter house :)
Bitcoin Private, with the ticker BTCP, is one of the latest and more popular Bitcoin forks with a focus on privacy. It was a curious fork, because instead of just forking off of Bitcoin, BTCP is actually a combined fork of ZClassic with Bitcoin. On January 28 a snapshot was taken of all the ZCL and BTC holders, and everybody who held 1 ZCL or 1 BTC at that moment would receive 1 BTCP. Two chains, combined into one, so to speak. At the time of the fork it created somewhat of a run on Zcash, to obtain as many forked BTCP coins as possible. Bitcoin Private is, as I said, a privacy centered coin. It combines the basic features of Bitcoin, but adds ZClassic's zksnarks privacy feature to it. In addition to this, BTCP also features a slightly bigger block size to make it a little bit faster. BTCP has replay protection, which means that it's a clean fork and no 'splitting' is required. Interestingly, after the slew of 'crap' Bitcoin forks, Bitcoin Private was actually heralded as a more serious fork with actual developers and a community.
The main idea is to collect as many bitcoins possible as in the near future the block reward is expected to be halved. While steam might be a good platform there are many others ways to stay well ahead in the crypto race . I shall be covering all crypocurunncices and the easiest ways to buy them. Thank you for your support. Have a blessed day friends!
wow thanks for that really that i believe you