What Is Bitcoin Private (BTCP)?

Bitcoin Private is a cryptocurrency created in March 2018 from a Bitcoin (BTC) and ZClassic (ZCL) hard fork. The founder and principal developܫer was Rhett Creighton, who also founded ZClassic. The ultimate aim of launching B🤡itcoin Private was to combine the privacy-rich features of ZClassic with the flexibility, security, and popularity of Bitcoin.

Understanding Bitcoin Private (BTCP)

Instead of being a standard 澳洲幸运5官方开奖结果体彩网:blockchain fork, the idea behind ꦐBitcoin Private was to complete a "fork-merge" that would involve the simultaneous forking of the Bitcoin blockchain and a merger with Zclassic blockchain.

The underlying process has been described as "a hard fork of ZClassic, which combines the unspent transaction outputs (UTXO) of ZClassic and Bitcoin into a new blockchain called Bitcoin Private. This means that the addresses and their Bitcoin amounts will be combined with ZClassic addresses and their amounts."

According to the Bitcoin Private whitepaper, the merged blockchain was meant to support two systems: transparent and shielded transactions. Like Bitcoin, the sources and destinations of all funds and amount values are securely and transparently stored on the blockchain. However, the shielded transactions encrypt these details into a special block s𒊎ection, making them verifiable but hard for third parties to decipher.

This operation was intended to create a new set of 20.3 million coins, keeping 700,000 for mining. The pre-mined 20.3 million tokens were then 澳洲幸运5官方开奖结果体彩网:airdropped—sent to Bitcoin and ZClass🤡ic holders' wallets to incentivize the cryptocurrency owners to switch to B🅺TCP.

A report by CoinMetrics revealed that more than two million BTCP were pre-mined secretly, suggesting a total supply of 22.6 million.

How Is Bitcoin Private Different from Bitcoin?

As Bitcoin gained popularity in the middle of the 2010s, its fixed, small block size and slow 澳洲幸运5官方开奖结果体彩网:block times led to speed, cost, and energy consumption issues. Higher transaction volume led to highe♛r fees and longer processing times, resulting in ▨backlogs. It became evident that one of Bitcoin's aspirations—to be a unit of exchange—was not feasible in its current state.

Additionally, the rise of power-hungry ASIC-based mining brought Bitcoin's decentralization ethos into question. Mining power became concentrated around a few professional mining companies and mining pools. Innovations in blockchain technology, including the Equihash 澳洲幸运5官方开奖结果体彩网:proof-of-work (PoW) algorithm, were developed to deal with this problem by limit🐭ing the cost-performance tradeoffs of ASIC-based mining systems.

Although Bitcoin was intended to allow users to maintain anonymity, it is possible to trace transactions. What's more, combined with other sources of pseudonymous data, it is possible to identify a person with their Bitcoin public key.

Similar to Bitcoin, the total coin supply for Bitcoin Private was intended to be capped at 21 million. The block reward was set intially at 1.5625 BTCP, with a block time of 2.5 minutes and a block size of 2 MB. Bitcoin Private uses the zk-SNARKs privacy protocol and the Equihash algorithm, which offers a GPU-friendly proof of work algorithm for mining.

Goals and Status of Bitcoin Private

Like many ideas circulating in 2017 and 2018, combining the security of Bitcoin with a way to rendཧer transactions private seemed like a good idea. When it launched, Bitcoin Private ranked in the top 50 coins in market capitalization, at around $550 million.

As of April 22, 2023, a comprehensive list of all cryptocurrencies lists Bitcoin Private at number 1,333 out of 9,044 cryptocurrencies with a market capitalization of $1.49 million.

Bitcoin Private raised several red flags from its inception: it pre-mined 96.6% of the total coins, leaving only 3.4% remaining a🃏s a mining reward. It also sought to 🌄piggyback on the reputation and adoption of Bitcoin rather than growing its user base organically.

At the end of 2018, less than a year after Bitcoin Private launched, the principles published an article on Medium, explaining that a "bad actor exploited a vulnerability in the BTCP fork mine code." This created as many as 1.7 million illegitimate "shielded" coins. The developers created a hard fork to fix the problem.

The Future of Bitcoin Private

In its latest Medium post, dated June 16, 2021, Bitcoin Private claims that a new chain—built by one contributor—will be revealed. It re🍎mains to be seen wheꦐn and if Bitcoin Private will become a contender in the cryptocurrency arena.

The Bottom Line

In 2023, more than 9,00🌱0 cryptocurrencies are more or less in existence. By market cap, Bitcoin Private is number 1,333.

The world of cryptocurrency trading is volatile, to say the least. At l🦋east for now,🍸 Bitcoin Private does not look like a contender to be the digital currency of the future.

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