3/01 ANDY HOFFMAN (CryptoGoldCentral.com) - WHY I HATE BPRIVATE (Endless Reasons), BUT HOPE IT SUCCEEDS (Just One)
Regarding tomorrow’s BPrivate fork, I have mixed emotions. Yesterday, I laid them out in “BRhodium vs. Private – “What investors should consider” – in which, I gave a big picture analysis of the most important aspect of the comparison. Which is, my belief that BRhodium is one of the few altcoins with a viable, defensible, long-term use case; as opposed to BPrivate – whose “use case,” in my view, is spurious at best, with zero long-term viability.
Moreover, to get BRhodium, one simply needed to be a Bitcoin holder; who proactively, at no cost, signed up for the airdrop. Which, when completed, will enable holders to immediately access their BRhodium – to either hold, or send to an exchange to sell.
Conversely, to get BPrivate, many risks had to be taken, with no guarantee of success. Yes, Bitcoin holders are entitled to BPrivate on a 1:1 basis, given that it is a BTC hard fork. However, it’s unlikely anyone will be splitting it anytime soon – as validated yesterday, when Bittrex, the largest ZClassic trader (ZClassic holders also receive BPrivate on a 1:1 basis), said it would split BPrivate for ZClassic holders, but NOT Bitcoin holders. Trust me, if Bittrex won’t split it, Trezor and Nano Ledger won’t be splitting it either.
Moreover, in what I view as an incredibly ominous sign, Bittrex said it would not even trade BPrivate; thus, forcing ZClassic holders to send their BPrivate to another exchange if they want to sell it (assuming the split gets done, given the “wallet cleanup issues” Bittrex must first navigate). In other words, Bitcoin holders may not be getting BPrivate anytime soon – and if they do, it may involve significant risks.
But that’s not the worst of it – as in order to receive your 1:1 distribution of BPrivate from ZClassic, you had to buy, and store, the ZClassic crap coin on Bittrex (or really shady exchanges), taking significant price risk in doing so. Those who did so early on did well – as when the opportunity first arose, ZClassic was trading under $10…before surging to $167 two weeks ago, on rank speculation about the BPrivate distribution. The problem being, that 90% of buyers didn’t buy at the lows – when far less volume traded; but prices well above $100; for an asset they knew NOTHING about; that was GUARANTEED to plunge once the BPrivate snapshot occurred. This is the nature of trading, for the “80 percenters” that follow the herd.
Thus, when the ZClassic price plunged yesterday, mere minutes after the snapshot, from $100 to $30, REAL MONEY was lost, in massive amounts. Worse yet, since ZClassic can only be purchased with other crypto, it’s very likely said REAL MONEY was Bitcoin. Sure, one can argue that you’re getting free BPrivate – but in order to do so, you lost massive amounts of Bitcoin to do it.
Yes, it’s possible the value of your BPrivate will offset the losses, but we’re talking about a LOT of losses for some people, that need to be offset by a financially engineered altcoin with little, if any, viable use case. To that end, I’d estimate, BPrivate needs to be worth more than .008 Bitcoin to make the average investor whole. However, in selling the Bitcoin, you took on tax liabilities. Plus, there’s no guarantee BPrivate will be worth 0.008 Bitcoin – particularly given the ominous red flag of Bittrex neither distributing it to Bitcoin holders or supporting BPrivate trading.
Then there’s BPrivate itself; which purports to be creating a new privacy concept - but in reality, is simply adding the word “Bitcoin” to ZCash; which itself, is a very low value coin, competing with numerous other privacy coins, like Monero, Monero V, and ZCash. And of course, the big pink elephant in the room known as Bitcoin – which in a few years’ time, will subsume the altcoin sectors’ best privacy protocols.
Additionally, I believe the BPrivate “community,” with its 35,000 Twitter followers, is a sham; comprised largely of small-fry ZClassic speculators – many of whom, lost their shirts buying ZClassic at or near its highs; who cumulatively, will attempt to pump BPrivate higher by marketing it BCash-style. That is, by repeating a mantra that BPrivate does something unique, when in fact its only uniqueness is the size of its well-publicized, highly visible marketing effort.
Such people tend to be the weakest hands of all, prone to dump at the first sign of trouble; which, given the Bittrex and ZClassic-related issues we just witnessed, may well be a harbinger of what’s to come, especially if the crypto correction is not yet over. Which I might add, has continued unabated in terms of Bitcoin dominance; even if altcoins, in absolute terms, have risen from their lows.
Last but far from least, BPrivate’s lead developer, Rhett – centralization, anyone? – is as ardent a BCash supporter as you’ll find. To me, this is the project’s most damning aspect – as in my view, anyone that believes BCash is superior to Bitcoin not only knows little about cryptocurrency, but is likely to be very dangerous to his followers. Heck, until the very last second – BPrivate was not going to be distributed to Bitcoin holders with non-SegWit addresses!
So, now that you know why I HATE BPrivate, here’s the reason I’d like it to succeed…to DUMP it as fast as I can for Bitcoin, the SECOND I can safely split it out. That is, IF it’s ever safely splittable.
I think no single fork is legit, indeed it is stealing the brand of BTC. However, I knew there should be a hype and bought Zclassic low and sold more than I invested before the fork. All the Bprivate that I get is free and I will dump it over time on every hype cycle as I did with with Bcash. I think of all the forks Bprivate is most legit because privacy will not be solved in BTC any time soon and Zcash has a huge founders reward what I don't like.
Speaking about privacy, I signed for the Brhodium, but will not claim it. To claim it you have to sign up with your email and I don't see any reason for the need for that (should be possible in a decentralized way, especially for a store of value coin). I know many companies are working on blockchain tracking systems, so giving my email that can identify me can harm my privacy and thus security and even the whole network (BTC will loose it's usefulness when all the addresses are identified). Beside that Brhodium is not so rare in the sense that about half of the new supply still have to be released and why make it 4mb blocks when it have to serve as a store of value?? 0.5 mb should be better.
When you know what you are doing you can claim your Bprivate 100% securely, but with claiming Brhodium you will give away your privacy and this will affect your security indirect!