Bitcoin Private’s Public Spat: Creighton Told to Walk for Talkin’ Fork
May 3, 2018 by Paul de Havilland
Rhett Creighton has been shown the door by the Bitcoin Private (BTCP) development team after he tweeted a suggestion that a new coin, Bitcoin Prime, could be merge-forked with Primecoin.
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Private Coins, Public Stoush – Fork-happy Creighton Cut Loose
Creighton was the creator of ZClassic (ZCL), a fork of privacy coin ZCash (ZEC). He joined the Bitcoin Private team to create a merge-fork of bitcoin and ZClassic. BTCP forked on February 28th, marking a unique co-fork of bitcoin and ZClassic into Bitcoin Private. Holders of both bitcoin and ZClassic became rightful owners of the new coin.
With his April 26th tweet suggesting the suitability of another bitcoin merge-fork – this time with Primecoin (XPM) – it appears the BTCP team decided the serial forker had to go:
If someone were to do another Bitcoin merge fork, they should do it with #PrimeCoin ($XPM)
Bitcoin Prime
— Rhett Creighton (@HeyRhett) April 27, 2018
Creighton followed that tweet with another three days later, seemingly indicating an intention to create Bitcoin Prime:
Bitcoin Prime is real and it is happening.
— Rhett Creighton (@HeyRhett) April 29, 2018
Twitter Erupts, Heads Roll, and XPM Surges in Rhett Offensive
Primecoin, traded on Cryptopia and Poloniex among others, surged with the announcement, up around 150 percent overnight.
While Primecoin owners certainly benefited from the news, Twitter rage also soared, with many questioning Creighton’s integrity and suspecting a pump and dump maneuver reminiscent of the ZClassic pump and then slump. None conveyed the outrage more succinctly that this tweet:
How many shitcoins are you gonna give birth to this year Rhett?
— RideTheLightning⚡️ (@MediumSqueeze) April 29, 2018
Creighton was duly ousted from the Bitcoin Private team.
Too Many Forks Don’t Cut the Mustard
Bitcoin Private followed in the footsteps of some nineteen bitcoin forks in 2017 – mostly flops – and is among an estimated fifty to occur over the course of 2018. Among the forks include Bitcoin God and Bitcoin Pizza. Warren Buffett can hardly be blamed for remaining skeptical about digital assets when activities in the space increasingly resemble the antics of a school playground. Forking from the bitcoin blockchain has quickly become a publicity-driven exercise.
While the Bitcoin Private fork did appear to be backed by the perceived desire among the developers to create a currency with valid privacy protocols built into the code, it was, in the end, a merge-fork of a previous fork… from which one member has now been dismissed because he is looking to create another merge-fork. Fork-happy developers that treasure privacy knowingly making controversial announcements on Twitter may make for an amusing sideshow. But the business of forking-for-fun is hardly the domain of serious-minded people.
Have your say. What do you make of Creighton’s apparent intention to merge-fork bitcoin and Primecoin?
Images via Pixabay
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