Like it or not, forking bitcoin has become an efficient approach for blockchain teams to receive quick money. How many forks will we have? How do we receive these free airdrops?
Take a Glimpse at Forked Coins Already Existing
Bitcoin Cash (BCH), the first bitcoin fork, was only listed on Viabtc when it first came out. Most of the bitcoin community, if not all of them, thought it was just a joke at first. The emergency difficulty adjustment (EDA) mechanism BCH adopted led to unstable block times, but since the November 13 upgrade and recent price spikes, it is safe to say that BCH has survived and is enjoying more support from exchanges and wallets.
Ordinary wallets supporting BCH include: Bitcoin.com, Electron Cash, Coinomi, Webmoney, Strongcoin, Stash, Jaxx, Bitpay, BTC.com. Hardware wallets: Ledger, Trezor, Keepkey. Paper wallets: Cashaddress, Walletgenerator. Mobile wallets apps: Bitcoinindia, Mobi and more. Official BCH wallets: Bitcoin ABC, Bitcoin Unlimited, XT, Parity, and Bitprim.
Exchanges and platforms listing BCH:
Bitcoin Gold (BTG), the GPU-friendly forked coin based off of bitcoin, was created on October 25 to compete with BCH and to fight mining centralization, according to its creator Jack Liao.
Ordinary wallets supporting BTG: Coinomi, Bitpie, Guarda, Freewallet. Official BTG wallet: BTGWallet.online. Hardware wallets: Trezor, and Ledger. News.Bitcoin.com spoke with Ledger’s Vanessa Rabesandratana who shared how to claim BTG at Ledger.
•Make sure you have Ledger Wallet Bitcoin Chrome app v1.9.9
•Make sure your Nano S firmware is v1.3.1
•Install the Bitcoin Gold app on your device through the Ledger Manager
•Launch the Ledger Wallet Bitcoin Chrome app on your computer
•Launch the Bitcoin Gold app on your Ledger device
•Click on “BTG split tool” line on the Chrome app.
Exchanges listing BTG:
Among these exchanges, Coinnest, Bleutrade, Bithumb, Bitstar and Okex have distributed BTG to users and launched BTG futures.
Forked at block 494604, Bitcoin Diamond (BCD) has been launched at over 30 exchanges. Among them, EXX has distributed BCD rewards to users and listed BCD/BTC futures trading.
The BCD team so far has only released information about its lead Chinese community leader Yang Linke, former founder of BTC China and creator of ICO Coin. Sources believe that BCD was actually initiated by Yang Linke.
Super Bitcoin (SBTC) is planned to fork at block 498888, and we’re already seeing SBTC futures reach over 0.13 BTC, surpassing BCH on the very first day. Other exchanges and wallets haven’t issued any notice on it. The total number of SBTC is 21.21 million of which 210,000 are pre-mined.
More Forks Are Coming
Compared to other “mysterious” teams, the Bitcoin Platinum(BTP) fork team has exposed three developers: WJ Cloud, Esup, Chalkman. The codebase is available at Github. BTP plans to fork at block 498533 on December 12. It is said that BTP is GPU-mining-friendly with no pre-mine, and that it will adhere to the Segwit2x solution.
Initiated by the European team Lightning, Lightning Bitcoin (LBTC) will fork at block 499999. It will be the first Bitcoin-forked coin to adopt the delegated Proof-of-Stake mechanism. Chinese community leader Jack Zhang has been promoting the project on Telegram and Wechat groups, saying LBTC is ”the real Bitcoin”. Based on its official website, LBTC is receiving more traction to get support from BTCC, Okex, Huobi, Cex, Gate.io, Codplay, and Ledger will support it.
And then there’s Bitcoin God (GOD). Blockchain angel investor Chandler Guo announced his forking of Bitcoin on the upcoming Christmas Day. God has 21 million units in total with no pre-mine. Chandler Guo said he is ”bitcoin Santa designated by God” to distribute free “candies” to bitcoin holders.
And, as if that was not enough, here are a few more upcoming Bitcoin forks;
Bitcoin Cash Plus (BCP). BCP will fork at block 501407 on or around January 2, 2018. It will adopt the Equihash mining algorithm.
Bitcoin Uranium(BUM). BUM will occur in December. It allows GPU and CPU mining and does not sport a pre-mine. The team is working on its website and Github pages.
Bitcoin Silver(BTSI). BTSI will fork some time in December, but block is still not decided. It changes Bitcoin’s proof-of-work algorithm from SHA256 to Equihash. Bitcoin holders who possess BTC private keys will receive Bitcoin Silver on the rate of 1 BTC=1 BTSI.
Bitcoin X (block to be decided). It has 210 billion in total and will be distributed to bitcoin holders on the rate of 1BTC=10000 Bitcoin X.
Do you support these ”airdrops”? How will it impact Bitcoin? How many forks will there be? Leave your comments below!
Images via Shutterstock, Lightning Bitcoin.