Source: iStock / Inkout
Hard forks are a unique way to resolve disagreements over proposed protocol upgrades in crypto asset networks. In the event that a faction within the community of a crypto currency does not agree with the majority of the network participants, they can fork the code and operate their “own” chain.
This has happened to Bitcoin (BTC) and its myriad forks, many of which apparently only exist (ed) to enrich the Bitcoin brand, to enrich its creators.
Let’s dive into the most notable bitcoin forks and see how they’ve performed against the original cryptocurrency.
Bitcoin Cash (BCH)
Bitcoin Cash (BCH) was launched in August 2017 by a faction within the Bitcoin community that disagreed with Bitcoin’s scaling roadmap and the SegWit upgrade.
The new chain called Bitcoin Cash was initiated by miners and developers who wanted to break down Bitcoin’s scaling limitations that resulted in long transaction times and high transaction fees by allowing larger blocks.
The argument against larger blocks, which has been advocated by the majority of the Bitcoin community, is that it will lead to centralization as the blockchain would eventually grow in size, making it difficult for individuals to run nodes themselves.
The yellow line – the price against BTC. Source: Coinmarketcap.com
BCH started at around $ 400 in mid-2017 and rose to over $ 600 a month later.
When the price of BTC passed the $ 20,000 mark in December 2017, BCH hit a high of over $ 3,000. At the time of writing, BCH was trading at $ 600.
Compared to the Bitcoin price, however, BCH has continuously lost in value since the beginning of 2018. While the dollar value remains at a relatively high level, the price of BCH versus BTC has hit an all-time low, trading below 0.001 BTC.
Bitcoin SV (BSV)
A fork of a fork, Bitcoin SV (BSV), was introduced as a hard fork of Bitcoin Cash in November 2018. BSV was split by a group of BCH community members led by Craig S. Wright and Calvin Ayre, who claimed that BCH’s features were not significant enough to meet the requirements for the Bitcoin Cash blockchain to scale successfully fulfill.
Additionally, BSV advocates advocated a return to the original Bitcoin design, as depicted in Bitcoin version 0.1. Bitcoin SV uses the nickname “Satoshi Vision” to refer to the Bitcoin whitepaper that did not advocate second-tier off-chain scaling solutions.
On a technical level, BSV was designed with a standard block size of 128 MB, which was expanded to 2 GB in a later update. The new structure was aimed at handling more transactions and generating more transaction fees in order to motivate miners to keep mining new blocks even when the block rewards are finally over.
BSV frontman Craig S. Wright continues to claim to be Satoshi Nakamoto, the creator of Bitcoin, despite not having presented any evidence. Since Wright’s claim is essential to BSV’s raison d’etre, his failure to substantiate his claim has also weighed on the price of the altcoin.
The yellow line – the price against BTC. Source: Coinmarketcap.com
BSV was trading at around USD 112 when it was launched in November 2018. At the time, Bitcoin was trading at over $ 6,000. In line with the rest of the recovering crypto markets in 2021, BSV hit an all-time high of $ 441 in April 2021. At the time of writing, the price for BSV is $ 170.
Compared to the Bitcoin price, however, the value of BSV has plummeted, hitting a low of 0.00277 BTC in October after falling steadily since early 2020.
Bitcoin Gold (BTG)
Bitcoin Gold (BTG) was founded in October 2017 with the slogan “Make Bitcoin decentralized again”.
Jack Liao and other co-founders wanted to achieve this by making their version of Bitcoin degradable with GPUs that anyone could run out of their homes. Claiming that mining had become too complex and costly for people to mine BTC with their PCs, they turned to a GPU miner-friendly proof-of-work algorithm called Equihash BTG.
BTG has managed to establish itself as a popular coin among miners at home, but has not been able to establish any other significant use cases beyond that.
The yellow line – the price against BTC. Source: Coinmarketcap.com
BTG debuted at $ 137 in October 2017 and rebounded in November to hit an all-time high of over $ 400. However, BTG’s price would drop below $ 100 in 2018 and continue the downtrend as the market became nervous about its perception of vulnerability to hacks highlighted by the 51% of attacks it suffered.
Unexpectedly, BTG’s price collapsed against the value of Bitcoin at the time of writing, trading below 0.0012 BTC.
Bitcoin Diamond (BCD)
The Bitcoin Diamond (BCD) fork took place in November 2017 when Bitcoin forks were suddenly in vogue. The founders of BCD started their chain with the (cl) goal of improving the Bitcoin protocol by increasing transaction times, lowering fees and improving privacy.
They implemented a new proof-of-work consensus algorithm to deter network attacks and separated transaction signatures from on-chain transactions to increase capacity to enable higher on-chain transaction throughput per second.
The yellow line – the price against BTC. Source: Coinmarketcap.com
Bitcoin Diamond’s price jumped above $ 66 in November 2017. However, this didn’t last and the price started falling to $ 5 on January 5th in January 2018. At the time of writing, the price of BCD is $ 2.31.
Relative to Bitcoin price, BCD’s value fell pretty much immediately after its inception. At the time of writing, BCD is trading below 0.00001 BTC per coin.
Bitcoin private (BTCP)
Bitcoin Private (BTCP) was created in March 2018 from a Bitcoin and Zclassic (ZCL) hard fork. The purpose behind founding Bitcoin Private was to combine the privacy features of Zclassic with the security of Bitcoin.
Bitcoin Private was not a standard fork, but a “fork merge” in which the Bitcoin protocol was split off and merged with Zclassic.
The yellow line – the price against BTC. Source: Coinmarketcap.com
BTCP started at USD 68 in early March 2018. However, this price level was short-lived and the price fell to $ 15 in April and eventually hit below $ 2 in November. Since then, BTCP’s price has not been able to recover.
Compared to the value of Bitcoin, BTCP fell below 0.00003 BTC per coin.
Get Forked!
The lesson when it comes to bitcoin forks is pretty clear: any cryptocurrency that goes by the name of bitcoin but is not bitcoin has depreciated in value to the real thing in the long run.
Bitcoin forks that claim to be the “real bitcoin” aren’t because the market decided they aren’t. Only bitcoin is bitcoin.
____
Learn more:
– $ 20,000 weekly Bitcoin price movements likely this year, the author says
– BitMEX Boss: El Salvador style Bitcoin adoption on the maps for 5 more nations
– How Bitcoin and Crypto Could Help Reduce Wealth Inequality (Without Miracles)
– Dominated by institutions, Bitcoin mining is also possible from home
– The Bitcoin Lightning Network is growing faster than you think
– Tech-enabled Bitcoin has other mass adoption challenges to solve
Comments are closed.