I mentioned the rumor of a SmartCash "sister privacy coin" in my previous post, and the pre-announcement has just been released. The new coin's name, Bitcoin Confidential, has a lot of people in an uproar on Twitter, Discord, and Reddit. Many users are threatening to dump their Smart holdings unless the name is reconsidered. It seems certain people are really annoyed with the knock off Bitcoin names.
Before we get into the debate of whether it is okay to use the Bitcoin name, lets take a step back in history. SmartCash was originally intended to be a privacy coin when it was first launched, and they were using ZeroCoin's code base to accomplish this task. The history of exploits in the ZeroCoin protocol are quite long, and it has affected many projects such in the past including SmartCash. The SmartCash community become aware of this and disabled their Renew feature, and they have now permanently abandoned the idea of using ZeroCoin in the future for security reasons. If I recall correctly, a hardfork over this issue occurred right before the delisting of Smart from Cryptopia. I'm always open corrections and suggestions if you believe things happened differently.
Not only has SmartCash abandoned that particular privacy feature, they have recently come to the realization that true privacy features come at the cost of mainstream adoption since many exchanges simply cannot list these types of coins in certain jurisdictions. SmartCash is now seeing mainstream adoption as their main priority, but they are still planning to implement a proposal to make their coin more fungibile.
Early adopters of Smart were sad to hear this news since they had originally invested in the concept of a privacy coin. In order to get the best of both worlds, SmartCash announced that a sister coin would be airdropped to Smart holders. The sister coin's focus will be a truly private crypto coin.
Airdrop Ratio: 1 Smart = 10 Bitcoin Confidential
It is good to keep in mind that we are still in the pre-announcement planning phase, and there are still a lot of details to be decided on and released. For now it seems, Bitcoin Confidential will be using Ring Signatures and will be purely Proof-Of-Stake. It is my understanding that this will not be a fork of SmartCash, and that it will be a brand new chain that distributes some of its coins to Smart holders via a snapshot. My best guess is that they will blend Bitcoin and Monero's code, but I am not sure what they will add to be distinguish themselves and be innovative. I guess time will tell.
Alright, let's get back to the Bitcoin naming and branding controversy....
Lets see if I can remember all the Bitcoin "X" names off the top of my head:
Bitcoin (Core)
Bitcoin Cash
Bitcoin Gold
Bitcoin Private
Bitcoin Diamond
Bitcoin Dark
and now.... Bitcoin Confidential
I know I am missing quite a few, so reply and let me know what other Bitcoin names I have missed.
Can Bitcoin even be defined?
I understand that the general thought is that the longest chain with the most proof of work is technically Bitcoin, and I agree with that if we are only looking at the original rules. However, a lot has changed since Satoshi took a backseat and years have passed. Does that same rule of thought apply even if that chain's mining is done almost entirely with chips produced by a single manufacturer? Does it still apply if the project decides to completely change its entire codebase? Are there no situations that could occur that would make you consider altering this definition?
The Bitcoin Brand Cannot Be Owned
The reality is noone owns the term Bitcoin. There is no trademark. It is a completely decentralized concept, and not everyone will agree on the definition of Bitcoin. Bitcoin invented cryptocurrency, so almost every coin has either partially copied or been inspired by the Bitcoin code.
Tons of coins, even those not taking the Bitcoin name, have taken Satoshi's original code and innovated in some remarkable ways. I don't view different cyptos as competing against each other. Even if you think these cryptos are in direct competition, simply let the free market decide the winners.
I really think all of the crypto coins will be entirely inter-operable, and in the future you will be exchanging through a decentralized routed pathway in the cheapest way even if it takes hopping between 10 currencies. Technology is evolving very fast as second layers are beginning to build on top of blockchains.
Bitcoin is an open source project and has split and been used in hundreds of projects. The Bitcoin network is giant. You can now even choose Bitcoins with different algorithms by choosing a forked version. We have a Bitcoin with ZKSnarks, a Bitcoin with equihash, a Bitcoin with giant on chain blocks, a Bitcoin with the most hashrate in the entire world, a Bitcoin with second layer instant and free transactions, and it will all keep evolving.