Bitcoin has taken the world by storm, but there’s more than one cryptocurrency in town, and they’re all vying to be the next big thing. In fact, there are dozens of cryptocurrencies that offer their own take on how blockchain should work, which begs the question: how do you know which one is right for you? Today we’ll be taking a look at Bitcoin Private and seeing if it stacks up to industry heavyweights like Ethereum and Ripple, as well as relative newcomers like Litecoin. Let’s get started!

The Billion Dollar Crypto Industry

So far, 2018 has been a great year for cryptocurrencies. From January to June, in fact, digital currencies have grown by more than $600 billion. That’s even after their massive crash in January and February—and that number is set to grow even more thanks to some recent developments. With more people than ever taking an interest in cryptocurrency (there are now as many Google searches for bitcoin as there are for Donald Trump), we can expect growth to continue. Whether or not you’re just getting started or have been tracking bitcoin prices since they were low-single digits, here’s everything you need to know about today’s crypto news

Coins vs Tokens

A lot of people are currently talking about how to define a crypto coin vs. a crypto token. The short answer is that it’s all relative. A good definition for coins would be tokens which run on their own blockchain, while tokens would be considered those which aren’t necessarily created on top of their own blockchain (also known as an ERC-20 token). In reality, there are a ton of projects right now running on Ethereum that are acting like coins – but could we call them coins or will they forever be called ERC-20 tokens? Therein lies your answer.

A Brief History of Bitcoin

In 2008, Satoshi Nakamoto, a pseudonymous figurehead, published a paper describing a peer-to-peer electronic cash system. The genesis block was mined in January 2009 and by November of that year had earned Nakamoto nearly $1 million worth of bitcoins. As more people began mining, using their computers to earn newly minted bitcoins in exchange for solving complex mathematical puzzles, demand increased along with difficulty until mining became unprofitable—not because it was impossible to make money, but because it simply wasn’t worth it anymore. In other words: difficulty is what killed bitcoin’s first chance at success as an actual currency for day-to-day transactions. And now it’s back, with new technology that promises a faster and more secure future.

How BTCP Works

First, some background. When ZClassic forked from ZCash, it took a snapshot of all existing balances. Anyone who held ZClassic before block 110,000 received an equal amount of BTCP. BTCP is essentially private ZCash and it looks like you’ll be able to transact with other cryptocurrency holders (as opposed to being restricted to major exchanges). Because you can send BTCP anonymously (if you so choose), users are claiming that it’s far better than either ZCash or Monero because you can use it on a greater variety of platforms without risking your identity (although these claims have yet to be proven). All in all, Bitcoin Private could be one of the most promising cryptocurrency forks we’ve seen and its value could skyrocket over time.

Where it’s Stored and Used

To understand where BTCP is stored and used, you must first know what it’s replacing. BTCP is a fork of ZCL, or bitcoin private and is considered by many as a product of ZClassic (ZCL) and bitcoin (BTC). For example, if you had 1 BTC before August 1, 2018 you have an equal amount in BTCP; similarly if you had 10 ZCL before August 1st 2018 then 10 ZCL = 10 BTCP.

Mining

It’s important to point out that miners are not simply processing transactions, though. When miners process transactions, they must solve complex math problems, says Popper. If a miner has a computer with a fast graphics card, it could potentially handle those problems faster than someone else with a slower graphics card. In reality, all that number-crunching requires more electricity than running an air conditioner, which makes it expensive for any individual miner to operate and is one reason why mining is dominated by large companies with big machines and cheap electricity.

Who Created it, and why?

BCP is a cryptocurrency developed by a group called The Zclassic Team. The new BCP token will be launched on February 28th, 2018 in an initial coin offering (ICO). Why did they create it? Zclassic is getting rid of all its replay protection measures and putting them into a hard fork called Bitcoin Private. In addition to creating BCP, they are getting rid of every single premine or ICO that happened in either project. This means that any investor who held both BTCP and ZCL will receive their proportional amount of BCP. These investors include Roger Ver, Jihan Wu, Li Xiaolai, Chandler Guo and others.

Future Use Cases

It’s easy to see why there is so much hype behind cryptocurrencies: they eliminate inefficiencies and censorship by providing a secure, global platform for individuals and businesses to conduct transactions without relying on an intermediary. In that way, cryptocurrency may hold more potential than any other technology since the internet. As Satoshi Nakamoto noted in his original white paper, The root problem with conventional currency is all the trust that’s required to make it work. The central bank must be trusted not to debase the currency, but the history of fiat currencies is full of breaches of that trust. Banks must be trusted to hold our money and transfer it electronically, but they lend it out in waves of credit bubbles with barely a fraction in reserve.