In this article I plan to shed some light on ZClassic and what factors recently led to its increase in valuation of about 2$ to its current price floating around $100.
It was only three weeks ago when Rhett Creighton, the creator of ZClassic, and the other founders of ZClassic unveiled their plan to release a Bitcoin fork / ZClassic. The new token they intend to create will be called Bitcoin Private.
In a brilliant move beforehand, Creighton asked the crypto community to support the upcoming fork. According to the post Creighton made it outlined that the fork will include replay protection so the ZClassic chain will continue to exist and Bitcoin Private will be airdropped to Bitcoin holders on a 1:1 basis and ZCL holders on a 1:1 basis.
Since Bitcoin Private was announced, the price of ZClassic surged from around $2 to over $88 as of now.
In August, 2017 Bitcoin Cash was launched as a fork of Bitcoin. This began a new era of Bitcoin forks (aka crypto dividends a term coined by Adam Meister on his Youtube channel around the time Bitcoin Cash was launched) in the cryptocurrency universe.
Since then, Bitcoin Gold, another Bitcoin fork, was successfully launched and dozens of hard fork proposals have been made. Several of these “crypto-dividends” that have not yet launched have futures markets. Amongst the crypto-dividends (launched and un-launched), the price ranges from $200 to over $2000 (Bitcoin Cash).
It seems clear that there is still huge demand for Bitcoin forks and that this one seems to be a cut above the rest because of the privacy protection it will offer to investors. Privacy is becoming increasingly important as governments move in to regulate the crypto space in coming months.
So, where will the price of Bitcoin Private end up? If Bitcoin Private successfully forks, the price should be somewhere in this range between $200 to $2000+. There are a number of reasons that Bitcoin Private could attain the higher end of this range which I will list below:
Bitcoin Private will be the first privacy coin fork which makes it special. Privacy coins are extremely popular at the moment and if you take a look at the market cap of the other large privacy coins you will see Dash with a $9 billion valuation and Monero at just around $5 billion.
The power of the Bitcoin forks is that they appear to give the forking coin a leg up against the other competitors. For example, Bitcoin Cash surpassed Litecoin’s market cap(a coin with a similar use case) at the time of launch. If the same occurs for privacy coins as does for scale coins, Bitcoin Private could exceed the market cap of the other privacy alt coins.
Based on the potential of the project I have to ask if I can afford not to be holding ZCL for this upcoming fork. The potential for Bitcoin Private to take a large chunk of the market is very high. In full disclosure I'd like to make my readers know that I already have a small position in ZCL and intend to be buying more as we approach this fork.
The introduction of Lightning Network later this year, and rollout of Segwit among large exchanges, could alleviate the pressures of high fees on the Bitcoin network. That may shift the focus of alt coin investors to look to privacy coins as a better speculation since Bitcoin still doesn’t offer privacy features and the solution that Bitcoin core developers have talked about (Confidential transactions) is still years away. This opening may create a void that a privacy centric alt can fill for the coming year or two. Bitcoin Private may be the right coin at the right time to fill this void.
The right coin for the right time may as well be the new motto. There is obviously significant demand for privacy coins and there is clearly high demand in this one based on the recent run up in price for ZCL.
Bitcoin Private has a development team dedicated to it with a track record of two successful forks. This team, led by Creighton was responsible for both the ZClassic fork of Zcash and the ZenCash fork of ZClassic. Given their track record and experience this fork is more likely to go off without a hitch than other forks. In addition, these developers have stated that they will continue to work on Bitcoin Private after the fork.
A competent development team forking an industry standard coin and adding privacy features. What is not to like here?
Bitcoin Private has some strong support in the Bitcoin media. Adam Meister, with his Bitcoin Meister youtube channel has taken a position in ZClassic in anticipation of this fork and Tai Zen is also recommending ZClassic to his viewers.
Backing by Adam Meister and Tai Zen is significant to say the least as youtube has been a huge driving force in moving up crypto valuations and market caps. If trends hold, this will be a big feather in the fork's cap.
The Bitcoin Private fork has no premine as Bitcoin Gold did. It also uses the same hashing algorithm as Bitcoin Gold, namely Equihash. The entire selling point of Bitcoin Gold is that it decentralizes mining because it can only be mined on GPUs which are not dominated by a single ASIC manufacturer. Bitcoin Private does this as well but has the other benefits listed. The investors and miners looking for an Equihash coin could flock to Bitcoin Private in favor of Bitcoin Gold.
I like coins that use this Equihash algorithm for the simple fact that centralization of the coin is much less likely to occur and it makes a fair playing field that opens up competition. Anyone can become a GPU miner and why shouldnt they if they believe in the token?
In addition to these reasons, since the Bitcoin Private fork will have replay protection, the holders of ZCL will still hold their ZCL after the fork. As we’ve seen with Bitcoin, forks don’t destroy value, they create value. After the Bitcoin cash fork, the price of Bitcoin rose by over 500% in a matter of 4 months. I could easily see a rise of ZCL to the several hundreds of dollars or more in anticipation of the fork and staying there after the fork and possibly even appreciating.
The author of the article I'm referencing thinks ZCL may easily rise to several hundreds of dollars in anticipation of the fork and from my experience with cryptocurrency, I firmly believe this as well. What do you guys think about this Bitcoin Private plan and the recent run up in the price of ZCL? Do you think this is a winning play here?
Disclosure: The author has a position in ZCL.
Source:
Investment thesis: ZClassic / Bitcoin Private - Medium
Image Source:
Youtube