Bitcoin Cash, Bitcoin Gold and now Bitcoin Silver. Soon every precious and semi-precious metal will have “its own Bitcoin variant.”
As the network prepares for the major update to include support for SegWit2x, yet another fork may soon grace the industry. Let’s take a look at what Bitcoin Silver is all about, shall we?
Making Bitcoin decentralized… again
And we thought that was the goal of Bitcoin Gold? Obviously (or not) we were wrong, with Bitcoin Silver’s developers turning to the Bitcointalk forum to promise the new kind of decentralization along with more user protections and fairer distribution.
Also, the same group wants to (un)intentionally kill the key selling point of Litecoin — to be the silver to Bitcoin’s gold.
We are still not 100% certain Bitcoin Silver (BTSI) will actually happen, but if it does — you’re better off knowing what’s it all about. So without further ado, here are…
5 things you should know about Bitcoin Silver
1. Bitcoin Silver will include replay protection
The upcoming fork, presuming enough miners decide to support the new blockchain, will implement full replay protection, which is touted as an essential feature that protects user’ coins from being spent accidentally. It aims to ensure the safety of the Bitcoin ecosystem.
2. Fair distribution
Coins that are created from a new genesis block always have ownership concentrated among a smaller group of people. In contrast, a hard fork creates a new blockchain with more users getting the new cryptocurrency, essentially free of charge.
3. Bitcoin Silver is coming in December
If everything goes as planned, the Bitcoin Silver fork will occur in December, with miners beginning to create blocks with a new proof-of-work algorithm. The new branch is a distinct blockchain (from the original chain) with the same transaction history as Bitcoin up until the fork (but then diverges from it).
4. New algorithm
Just like Bitcoin Gold, Bitcoin Silver will also implement a new Proof-of-Work (PoW) algorithm, Equihash, that makes mining decentralized (again). Special computer hardware designed for BTC mining (ASICs) will be obsolete, giving ordinary users with widely-available consumer hardware a chance to mine with their GPUs.
5. How can you get Bitcoin Silver?
The Bitcoin Silver initial coin distribution method is exactly the same as that used by Bitcoin Cash (BCH). All Bitcoin holders who possess BTC private keys in December will receive Bitcoin Silver on the rate of 1 BTC = 1 BTSI. You need to control BTC private keys in order to make Bitcoin Silver transactions.
Like any other hard fork before, Bitcoin Silver essentially promises free money to existing Bitcoin holders. And that’s a powerful driver, when you think about it.
Then again…
At the moment of this writing, I couldn’t find any technical details about Bitcoin Silber, though if we look at the case of Bitcoin Gold — we know this is not necessarily the problem. However, one of the details we expect to learn about in the near future is the exact block the fork will occur — it remains undetermined.
We were a bit skeptical — and still are — about Bitcoin Gold, but for the time being — it seems to be working just fine. Our eyes are on SegWit2x, which will bring the much needed scalability to the platform; and in the meantime, if we can get some free money as a result of the Bitcoin Silber fork — we’ll gladly take it. 😉