Bytecoin (BCN) is a cryptocurrency that since 2012 has focused on making transactions anonymous. Nowadays we live almost more online than offline and it is becoming increasingly important to pay close attention to your own privacy. With Bytecoin you do not have to worry about online payments any more, this is now completely anonymous. Are you curious about how they do this? Read the explanation about Bytecoin (BCN) here.

What is Bytecoin (BCN)?

Bytecoin (BCN) belongs to the category 'private coins'. Like Monero (fork from Bytecoin), Dash , Verge and ZCash , they try to make payments where nobody can see who the sender and the recipient is. People who want to keep their finances private are well served by this kind of cryptocurrency.

Bytecoin transaction

With fiat money , the transactions go through the bank or another intermediary. This intermediary has a controlling function and executes it when the transaction is considered plausible.
At Bytecoin, money payments are made via the internet and transfers are controlled by the Bytecoin network. It is possible to send Bytecoins from here to the other side of the world within 20 minutes. No additional actions need to be done and no extra costs are charged. This is something you unfortunately do not get at the regular bank.

How is such a transaction anonymous?

To hide that you are the one who sends the money, the transaction is encrypted by cryptographic algorithms called CryptoNote. In addition to the sender, it is also the receiver that is shielded from the outside world. This is done through Ring Signatures and Stealth Addresses.

Ring Signatures (privacy for sender)

When I sign a payment check with my signature, it is possible that others recognize my signature and know that the check comes from me. Signatures from five people are collected with Ring Signatures and a new signature is created. This makes it impossible for anyone to recognize the set scribble.

Stealth Addresses (privacy for receiver)

At Bitcoin the recipient of the money has one public key , with Bytecoin he has two. These two are used to generate a unique public key that is valid only for the current transaction. Should he receive another transaction later, a completely new public key will be generated from his two public keys. This makes it impossible to trace the recipient.

This is how the community introduces Bytecoin itself:

Characteristics of Bytecoin: BCN

Bytecoin (BCN) is specifically intended for making (private) payments. Besides receiving a transaction it is also possible to come to the cryptocurrency by means of mines. The network is being kept running by a Proof-of-Work mechanism.

Egalitarian Proof-of-Work

Anyone can contribute to the Bytecoin network with his computer. The computer is then used to check and execute transactions. Your computer, along with other participants, takes over, as it were, the task of the banker. In this way it is possible to run the network in a decentralized way. This process is called mines and you will receive a reward in the form of Bytecoins for your efforts.

Difference with Bitcoin mining

Bitcoin uses the SHA-256 algorithm for its Proof-of-Work. This algorithm gives great benefits to minors who have strong ASIC miners. These are expensive devices and with that you give the rich people the opportunity to minate better than others with a normal computer. Because a number of parties own the largest part of the mining pool, this centralization works. This is the last thing you want as a cryptocurrency .
Bytecoin wants to counter this centralization with an improved Proof-of-Work, called Egalitarian Proof-of-Work. In this own form, normal video cards (GPUs) and processors (CPUs) can also effectively mince coins and this makes it accessible to anyone with a normal computer.

Team

At present, their core team consists of four full-time C ++ programmers, a cryptography expert, a community manager and a number of programmers who can be deployed in multiple areas. Besides this team they have a good relationship with various graphic designers, front-end developers, mobile developers and system administrators who often carry out assignments for them.

They want, as with most anonymous coins, not to be recognizable by name and face and themselves indicate that their identities are in the thousands of lines of programming code. In itself understandable that they choose this since governments are not very keen on initiatives where monetary transactions can be done anonymously.

Within the community they are building, there are people who demonstrably come into the picture. Here you can see the overview of the people who are committed to the future of Bytecoin within this community. Among other things, there are designers, copywriters and community managers from different countries. Within this group there are also two advisers in the field of mining and financing. Furthermore, no group of consultants or partners is known who work closely with the project.

Roadmap

The team hardly gives a picture of where it wants to go in the coming years. The roadmap they have published is not extensive and only covers the first two quarters of 2018.

Criticisms

Bytecoin succeeds well in making transactions anonymous by means of Ring Signatures and Stealth Addresses, but the amount of coins that are sent is still visible. The fork from Bytecoin, Monero, solves this by implementing Ring Confidential Transactions. This will mask the value of the transaction. It is important for Bytecoin to realize something like that so that they can keep their status of anonymity even better. At the moment there are more and more privacy coins and eventually the cryptocurrency that can best guarantee anonymity will have the greatest chance of worldwide adoption.

There is a lot of criticism of the Proof-of-Work mechanism in general. It would be environmentally unfriendly due to the high power consumption of the connected computers. A Proof-of-stake mechanism like NEO , where I only have to keep my coins in the wallet, would work more efficiently.

Conclusion

Bytecoin has been operational since 2012, making it one of the oldest crypto projects in the crypto world. They want to give privacy back to the users and prevent third parties from gaining from the transactions of people. It is the first crypto project that has integrated the CryptoNote protocol and has laid a foundation for new cryptocurrency such as Monero.

This year they will also focus on the marketing of the project and with the listing on Binance they have made an important step forward. They are now in the top 20 cryptocurrency's and we are very curious about what it will bring us in the coming period. We follow the developments in any case with a lot of interest and have good expectations.

Everything You Need To Know About Bytecoin (BCN)