The Marketing Ploys of Clones: Another Project Aims to Create a ‘Perfect Bitcoin’

This week another bitcoin-based clone is coming called ‘Bitcoin Atom,’ a project that joins the myriad of other BTC copycats that have allegedly copied the protocol since late 2017. According to the team, the BCA network will launch when the bitcoin core network processes block 505,888 or roughly around January 24.

Also read: South Korean Card Companies Block Transactions to Overseas Cryptocurrency Exchanges

Block 505,888

As exasperating as it sounds another bitcoin protocol fork called ‘Bitcoin Atom’ (BCA) is allegedly coming to the cryptocurrency ecosystem this week. So far there have been many cloned versions of Satoshi’s codebase, but a vast majority of them have been shady, and the projects don’t have functional networks. All of them claim to have unique features or mutations of the code which is now commonly used as a marketing ploy.

Bitcoin gold (BTG) was able to change the algorithm, and the currency is a GPU mineable token with the same history as BTC, but even that project is plagued by a pre-mine and suffered from some serious security flaws with supporting wallets. Every other clone out there since BTG has seemingly been all talk, or straight up scams. Alongside this, most of them have poorly put together websites, and zero infrastructure from reputable cryptocurrency providers.  

The Perfect Bitcoin Promises

Bitcoin Atom’s website offers similar promises like Diamond, United, Lightning, Super, God, and all the other snapshots have promised in the past — A grand mutation of different protocols aligned together to make the ‘perfect bitcoin.’ First the project details that it will offer both Proof-of-Work (PoW) as well as Proof-of-Stake (PoS) similarly to the Peercoin network. Individuals who own BTC will get BCA with a 1:1 distribution, but accessing these coins may prove difficult as the project has less than five wallets and exchanges supporting this effort. BCA developers also claim they will use atomic swaps and lightning network technology to enhance its network.

“Bitcoin Atom brings a truly decentralized way of digital asset exchange — with on-chain atomic swaps on board. By using built-in hash time-locked contracts (HTLCs) and its own HTLC API,” explains the team’s initial announcement.

Very Little Infrastructure Support and Borrowed Features

As far as infrastructure the forked project does have a Github repository that features the development team’s list of other people’s open source code. For instance, the BCA repo contains forked versions of Lightning with codebases taken from Elements, Acinq, Lightning Labs, as well as atomic swap code from Decred, Altcoin.io, and other development teams. Other than that, the repository does not show much of anything that the developers have created themselves that proves they can actually create a functional network.    

Visitors of the team’s Telegram channel show a lot of people got burned during BCA’s recent pump and dump on Chinese exchanges.

BCA only has three exchanges willing to list the token which includes Yobit, Okex, and Exrates. Further, there are only three wallets mentioned on the website, Coinomi and ESR, while the other one is the full node client called Atom wallet which is unavailable. Popular hardware wallets like Ledger or Trezor have not mentioned supporting BCA, so its unlikely they are taking the project seriously. Ledger Wallet warns its Twitter followers about shady Bitcoin Diamond websites blatantly asking for seed phrases. The website that aggregates prices and exchange volumes, Coinmarketcap (CMC), has listed the BCA’s Yobit futures which started at $1,400 USD per token. At the moment CMC statistics shows the price is roughly $540 but the data feed seems to be broken. Heading over to the Yobit exchange shows BCA’s value at $247 and only $15,600 in futures trade volume. 

Yobit exchange shows BCA futures at $247 at 1 pm EDT January 23, 2018.

The latest attempt to fork bitcoin’s code and call it a new name while claiming to give it cutting-edge features shows that people are still pursuing this idea. Additionally, some people had found out the hard way when the coin’s futures price was valued at $1,400 and some individuals invested. One trader states on the team’s Telegram channel that he lost money because of the extreme price dip.

“We don’t control prices, just make the technology,” The Bitcoin Atom Telegram channel administrator explains to the man who lost money.

What do you think about all these forks and promises to provide a more perfected and better-decentralized bitcoin? Do you think Bitcoin Atom’s network will work or do you think it will be bunk like the rest of the clones? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below.

Disclaimer: Bitcoin.com does not endorse nor support this fork/clone/project or its related services/exchanges and wallet providers. Readers should do their own due diligence before taking any actions related to the mentioned company or any of its affiliates or services. Bitcoin.com and the author are not responsible, directly or indirectly, for any damage or loss caused or alleged to be caused by or in connection with the use of or reliance on any content, goods or services mentioned in this article.

Images via Bitcoin Atom website, Medium blog, and Telegram screenshot.

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