Believe me, I like BTC forks about as much as getting teeth removed at the dentist. I think it is wreckless and although quite common, it may help Bitcoin and the ecosystem in the short run but in the long run it threatens the future of BTC which may or may not be bad...

A fresh new Bitcoin fork successfully debuted Friday, but its 4.2 bln coins are already raising questions.

I agree that 4.2 billion coins is a bit disturbing but on the other side, markets and investors will decide what value to assign these tokens. If they continue forking BTC they will need to have different properties so called the new cryptocurrencies Bitcoin is quite a marketing ploy however, proof-of-stake will revolutionize blockchain so I think the diamond dev team (which remains oddly anonomous) may be on to something here...

Bitcoin Diamond (BCD), which launched at block 495866, aims to switch from proof-of-work to proof-of-stake after mining is completed - after just 10,000 blocks.

A curiously complex introduction on Bitcointalk Nov. 22 paved the way for Bitcoin’s latest doppelganger, which unlike previous incarnations Bitcoin Cash (BCH) and Bitcoin Gold (BTG) has hardly anything in common with Bitcoin (BTC) at all.

Again, BTC has the longest track record, the most name recognition its well established as a settlement layer but it isn't a great model for small day to day transactions. Maybe Bitcoin diamond can fill in that gap?

Despite claiming a 28-exchange support figure, however, little is known about what BCD aims to achieve.

This is one thing I think will be the downfall of BCD. On one side there is a team that wants you to invest your hard earned money in their crypto asset but on the otherside they want to remove themselves of all responsibility. This is a huge red flag in my book...

An anonymous developer team, along with an anonymous ‘Bitcoin Diamond Foundation,’ appears to be in charge of the groundwork, yet user queries about accessing coins yield a standardized response.

The response that people received in regard to their questions looks like this 'Those wishing to unlock their BCD balances should ask wallet providers themselves, developers suggest, apparently hoping combined pressure will force the Bitcoin ecosystem to adapt to yet another hard fork.'

So what we have here is a trojan horse. If you want to get full co-operation you need to break a few eggs, send angry customers of exchanges hurling towards their CS ticket systems and see if they buckle under pressure. I've heard of worse approaches so I'd say this strategy will probably work!

In fact, I make that claim because right now at this very moment, it is slowly working for Bitcoin Gold, the previous fork of the network which as I write this is gaining momentum on markets.

Coinmarketcap shows that an all time high of $526 and may be broken at any point in the near future if current enthusiasm remains. Another interesting fact is that in the past 24 hours, BTG has gained more than 40 percent.

Techblogger Wrap Up

I'm not completely sold on all these forks. I love what it has done to my bitcoin holdings in the short term but feel ultimately this will be the downfall of BTC. However, I also feel that cryptocurrencies are here to stay but I'll be looking at moving towards more platform based blockchains with real proven use cases.... The day of cryptocurrencies may be coming to an end and it may just give rise to crypto-platforms which bring even more to the table!

Source:

Bitcoin Gold or Comedy Gold? Bitcoin Diamond Launches With 4.2 Bln Coins - The CoinTelegraph