I can't believe it's not Bitcoin - 20 Bitcoin Brand Copycats
In 2018, Bitcoin has hit more headlines than I could found and has become much more socially accepted than it was in the early days of its release back in 2009. For years after Satoshi Nakamoto unveiled Bitcoin, the digital currency has had a reputation for being a platform that primarily served drug trade and other forms of illicit spending. Now that it has taken seriously by financial markets and its value has increased exponentially since 2009 opportunists have taken note and are trying to jump on the bandwagon.
Since Bitcoin is an open source protocal everyone has access to the source code and many of the popular altcoins today are based on a lot of Bitcoins source code. However for some, it wasn't enough to simply get the code to use as a base for your business, they had to take it even further. Bitcoin copycats are leveraging the Bitcoin brand equity for their own businesses, but some question whether this is a bad thing.
While this branding stigma was true to some extent, it largely overlooked the technological features of how Bitcoin and other digital currencies could impact various industries and enact social good. Bitcoin’s popularity has since come a long way to mitigate negative opinions about the platform, with retail investors continuing to engage with digital currencies in recent months.
Now that Bitcoin has become more publicly acceptable, there are many projects in the digital currency space that could be harming the industry’s reputation as a whole by leveraging the brand name. This raises a key point of discussion for the digital currency community: should Bitcoin protect its “brand,” or is reputation damage an unavoidable risk in the decentralized landscape.
I've been pretty vocal on my dislike of any Bitcoin hard forks and any currency that makes use of the Bitcoin brand shows weakness since they cannot stand on their own as a project as a technology and as a currency ecosystem and needs to muddy the waters to get investors interested in their project.
An honest market filled with bad actors
Despite the well-meaning intention of many pioneers currently driving the digital currency movement, bad actors take advantage of the industry’s popularity in order to pedal projects that only serve to make the creators money.
Fake businesses and other cryptocurrency scams harm both Bitcoin and the digital currency landscape as a whole for many reasons. First, the emergence of these fraudulent projects drove platforms like Google, Facebook, and Twitter to ban digital currency advertisements on their ads platforms.
Second, mainstream adoption of digital currencies is largely dependant on how the general public perceives the industry. While digital currency education amongst the public has increased in recent months, many still do not know the difference between Bitcoin and other digital currencies.
Some, for instance, still incorrectly believe that Bitcoin is indicative of the entire industry – and vice versa. This means that when fraudulent projects scam investors, these acts can be incorrectly attributed to Bitcoin.
The Bitcoin copycats started with the Bitcoin Cash hard fork and since what I would refer to as a relative success of BCH (Bitcoin Cash) we've seen more and more copycats throwing their name into the hat. In fact, I've actually found 20 coins that use the word Bitcoin in their name but they aren't Bitcoin.
Don't get it confused NONE of these coins are Bitcoin and I think the world needs to know how to differentiate between these imposters and the real thing. Now that you've made it past my rant its time to check out what these fake bitcoin cryptocurrencies are.
1. Bitcoin Cash (BCH)
Bitcoin Cash was created to bring back the essential qualities of money inherent in the original Bitcoin software. Over the years, these qualities were filtered out of Bitcoin Core and progress was stifled by various people, organizations, and companies involved in Bitcoin protocol development.
The result is that Bitcoin Core is currently unusable as digital money due to increasingly high fees per transactions and transfer times taking hours to days. This is all because of the problems created by Bitcoin Core’s blocks being full. For more on B-Cash check out my review here
2. Bitcoin Gold (BTG)
Bitcoin gold was a hard fork of the original open source cryptocurrency which took place on October 24, 2017. While hard forks take place for a number of reasons – including for the purposes of scaling as a cryptocurrency customer base grows, or because of developer conflict and differences of goals – bitcoin gold's stated purpose has been to "make bitcoin decentralized again."
3. Bitcoin Silver (BTCS)
A Scam coin that didn't last very long
4. Bitcoin Bronze (BTCB)
Bitcoin Bronze presents a solution to the problem. It is a lightweight version of Bitcoin, running on the Ethereum blockchain, were the fees are about 1/20 of the cost and the speed is 25x faster per block! Designed to be lightweight, cheap and lightning fast, Bitcoin Bronze is the future of cash on e-commerce and p2p trading.
Affordability, usability and high availability are our top goals. If you missed the Bitcoin revolution, its time to get to the Bronze Age in Bitcoin History!
5. Bitcoin Private (BTCP)
A hard fork is when a single cryptocurrency splits in two. It occurs when a cryptocurrency’s existing code is changed, resulting in both an old and new version. This case is somewhat unique, whereby ZCL and BTC were co-forked into Bitcoin Private (BTCP).
6. Bitcoin Diamond (BCD)
Adding on Lighting network to fast transaction. Do Not require trust of Payment Channels to realize a real-time, massive transaction network. Then solving the situation of over-priced Bitcoin, increasing the total supply of Bitcoin Diamond and lowering the price will allow more people to participate in Blockchain world. Yes, that's Bitcoin Diamond people, riveting stuff!
7. Bitcoin Interest (BCI)
Bitcoin Interest ("BCI") is a competitive staking cryptocurrency focusing on three key areas Technology, Community, and Savings. Our blockchain has new integrated savings technology that allows our users to safely park their coins and earn interest payments without ever moving coins from their wallets. I really have no interest in this coin and neither should you
8. First Bitcoin (BIT)
What could be more misleading than calling an altcoin "First Bitcoin"? Pure stupidity and I hope that people don't actually fall for this...First Bitcoin Capital is the first publicly traded company dedicated to bitcoin and blockchain development to enter the lucrative crypto-currency space.
9. Bitcoin Plus (XBC)
Need extra bitcoin? Why not try Bitcoin Plus? BitcoinPlus also known by its ticker - XBC, is an alternative Cryptocurrency with a Modern and Efficient working wallet. XBC has a low start supply with a Maximum Total of 1 Million Coins. BitcoinPlus Coins are generated through Proof of Stake. Little over 100,000 coins are currently in circulation.
10. Lite Bitcoin (LBTC)
Bitcoin reborn as LiteBitcoin (LBTC), it is an experimental new digital currency that enables instant payments to anyone, anywhere in the world. LiteBitcoin uses peer-to-peer technology to operate with no central authority: managing transactions and issuing money are carried out collectively by the network.
LiteBitcoin is also the name of the open source software which enables the use of this currency.
11. Bitcoinz (BTCZ)
Claims to be Bitcoin but with the zCash privacy algorithm on top of it, so basically its a crappy version of Zcash
12. Bitcoin Red (BTCRED)
I think its called red because that is the only candlestick you see on these charts. No website available who knows what they up to or who they even are
https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/bitcoin-red/
13. Bitcoin Fast (BCF)
Slow, centralized, and expensive-to-send Bitcoin forks are NOT the future of cryptocurrency! With transaction speeds more than 10x faster than Bitcoin and subpar alternatives, Bitcoin Fast is the invaluable payment system for everyone. Join our community today and start staking BCF for +25% annually with frequent rewards!
14. Bitcoin Scrypt (BTCS)
Want the reputation of Bitcoin but with a different algorithm? BTCS claims to be moving to a hybrid proof-of-stake consensus algo to empower coin holders and reduce energy consumption
- https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/bitcoin-scrypt/
- https://bitcoinscrypt.io/
- https://theotherbitcoin.com/
15. Bitcoin Dark (BTCD)
Colours are all the rage right now. Even more so than colours though, are colour-related adjectives which imply privacy! Lol the domain is currently up for sale but the coin still has a pretty decent value but only because supply is so small.
16. Bitcoin Moon (BTCM)
Bored AF waiting for your BTC to hit the moon? Have no worries, this shitcoin is self-proclaimed to already be there! BTCMoon was specifically structured in a way to avoid centralized ownership. At creation, only 1,000,000 tokens will be kept by the ownership team for creation costs. The remaining 20,000,000 tokens will be distributed through an exchange, ensuring a diverse base of ownership.
17. Super Bitcoin (SBTC)
The expansion war over the past three years has severely hindered the development of the bitcoin technology. Bitcoin has lost a tremendous share of the cryptocurrency market due to aggressive competition coming from the likes of Ethereum and ZCash. The bitcoin community has therefore gathered a group of enthusiasts and developers who share the goal of revitalizing bitcoin dominance. The fork will take place at block height 498888, after which new functionalities will be added to the forked chain. The original bitcoin holders will be compensated with one super BTC for every BTC held.
The website seems like its a parody of a real site and It doesn't inspire anything super!
18. BTC Talk Coin (TALK)
There is not much known about this coin, I'm not even sure if its part of Bitcoin talk in any way.
19. Bitcoin god (GOD)
Bitcoin God is a borderless non-profit peer-to-peer organization. Our vision is to leverage a decentralized platform to solve the many problems created by existing centralized system. Bitcoin God as a blockchain based network will enable tracking of each ledger transaction in a transparent and clear fashion. The token holders of Bitcoin God can pinpoint whoever they are trying to help via our peer-to-peer blockchain accurately.
20. Bitcoiin (B2G)
Bitcoiin (spelt with two i's) ran an ICO in 2018 with a cap of $75 million USD (over $96 million CAD) and claimed that it reached its funding goal. Following its announcement, the project’s leaders purportedly stepped aside, raising questions about its legitimacy altogether.
Have your say
What do you think of Bitcoin copycats? Are they helping further the cause for adoption or are they scams in it for a quick buck and trying to fragment the market and leveraging off the Bitcoin brand?
Would love to hear your thoughts so drop me a comment below!
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I know about half those shitforks but you amazed me with the other half.
Lol me too! When I started researching for this article I already knew like 6 of them and then when I found more and more and I realized I hit 20 I was mind blowin at how bad it’s gotten
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