Guide to the Zclassic / Bitcoin Private Fork 🚨 This article is 6 years old...
Guide to the Zclassic / Bitcoin Private Fork
5 min read
Updated: Apr. 9, 2020 at 6:43 pm UTC
Cover art/illustration via CryptoSlate. Image includes combined content which may include AI-generated content.
In 2017, we saw several Bitcoin forks like Bitcoin Cash, Bitcoin Gold and Bitcoin Diamond. In 2018, there are over 10 more on the way such as Bitcoin God, Bitcoin Private and Bitcoin Monkey. I am kidding about Bitcoin Monkey, but the amount of Bitcoin forks that are on the way are comical. For a more complete list including Bitcoin Ore and Bitcoin Pizza… check out this page on upcoming Bitcoin forks.
A fork in cryptocurrency occurs when the source code of a project is changed and a majority of the users can not agree on the change. If I added a line of code to Bitcoin that gave half of every block reward to me, most people would not agree with that.
If I wanted to proceed, even though the majority doesn’t agree, I could then fork the project creating my version (Bitcoin Monkey) that co exists with the original Bitcoin. I would use Bitcoin’s existing history which is basically a snapshot of where all the coins reside at a given time, as well as past transactions.
Why Would Someone Want to Fork Bitcoin?
One incentive of forking from Bitcoin, is that it brings a lot of attention, and a massively increased market capitalization of the coin.
Market capitalization is calculated by multiplying the amount of coins in circulation by the last price a coin was sold for. When a coin forks, users may decide to not claim the fork, for whatever the reason (usually privacy).
This creates a limited supply of the coin compared to its circulating supply. This makes the coin have lower supply than it appears to, which creates a “fake” market cap.
This is clearly shown in the market cap rankings, as there are technically 6 versions of Bitcoin in the top 300. Bitcoin, BCash, Bitcoin Gold, Bitcoin Diamond, Bitcoin Dark and Zclassic (futures market in a way for Bitcoin Private).
Currently, Zclassic has 3.18 million coins. When the fork happens, Bitcoins current supply of 16.8 million will be added to Zclassics creating a circulating supply of ~20 million Bitcoin Private.
What is Zclassic?
To explain this, we are going to go all the way back to 2016 when Zcash split from Bitcoin. Zcash planned to add way more privacy than the current version of Bitcoin.
There were two main additions to the code, that many people had an issue with. The first addition, is a founders reward, which means that 20% of all the newly issued coins for the first four years, are given to Zcash investors and developers. They claim that this is a way for the coin developers to be rewarded for their hard work, and also a way to ensure they have the coins future success in mind.
The creator of Litecoin, Charlie Lee recently took a different route, and publicly announced that he sold all of his Litecoin, to remain impartial to the project.
The second addition was a “slow start” block reward. This reduces the block rewards initially, and slowly ramps up to be in line with Bitcoins block rewards. This occured for the first 20,000 blocks, which was around 34 days.
Many people saw this unfair, as the price of Zcash skyrocketed in those first days. At one point Zcash was selling for 100 BTC each. To put that into perspective, today they are worth .041 BTC each.
Later in October 2016. Zclassic forked from Zcash, with two key changes.
- No Founders Reward
- No Slow Start
Many view Zclassic to be a much more fair alternative to Zcash, while keeping the strengths of Bitcoin and Zcash intact.
In early December 2017, developer Rhett Creighton announced that he would be teaming up with the old Zclassic co-owner Joshua/@movrcx and together they will be reviving the once abandoned Zclassic project. This excited many people, and brought a lot of attention back to the project.
A week or so later, Rhett started announcing plans to fork Zclassic, into something called Bitcoin Private. There are so many forks in Zcashs history that a family of 3 could eat with them.
The official snapshot date for the Zclassic/Bitcoin Private fork is said to be on February 28, 2018.
If your goal is to own Bitcoin Private, your best bet is to obtain Zclassic, as they are currently going for around $100 while Bitcoin’s are selling for around $8,000.
No exchange has commented on supporting the fork/airdrop yet, so it is best to keep your Zclassic on an official wallet. I would expect Bittrex to, as it is currently listed on there, and they supported the NXT/IGNIS airdrop.
How Do I Buy Zclassic?
Zclassic is pretty limited on the exchanges it can be bought on. There are only 3, Bittrex, Cryptopia, and Coinexchange. Out of all of the 3, I trust Bittrex the most, but they currently have their sign ups down. I recommend Cryptopia if you do not have access to Bittrex.
You can slo try signing up for Bittrex’s waitlist, but I am unsure when the signups will be processed.
For those interested in a new account on Bittrex, please use this waitlist form. https://t.co/hdH2ruviPU
— Bittrex (@BittrexExchange) January 29, 2018
I do not like keeping my cryptocurrency on exchanges, so it is important to keep them on a secure wallet. Learn about Zclassic wallets in the section below!
Zclassic / Bitcoin Private Wallets
The official Zclassic wallet is available for download on the projects website.
The Mac and web wallets are currently being updated, so stay tuned for those. It is not currently supported on the Ledger Nano S, which in my opinion is the best way to store any cryptocurrency. Past Bitcoin forks like Bitcoin Gold and Bitcoin Cash have been supported by the Ledger Nano S, so in the event that Bitcoin Private gets as big as those, it will almost certainly be added.
What’s next for Zclassic and Bitcoin Private?
One of the lead developers on Zclassic, Rhett Creighton has said that after the fork, he will focus his efforts on Bitcoin Private, not Zclassic. If history repeats itself, similar to the NXT airdrop situation, the price of Zclassic will fall the second the snapshot happens, as the current price will not reflect the cost of 1 Zclassic and 1 BCP, it will just reflect 1 Zclassic, which had a price of around $1.80, even when there was no developers working on it.
If you want to keep track of the Bitcoin Private fork situation, I would recommend following their reddit and twitter. For price updates, check out Zclassics coinmarketcap page.
