Bytecoin Review: Beginners guide
Bytecoin (BCN): The original privacy coin
Industry type: Digital cash economy.
What is Bytecoin? Bytecoin is a private, decentralized cryptocurrency with open source code. Beginning in 2012, it is the original privacy coin that led to the hard forking of Monero and Aeon from its chain. Bytecoin transactions are untraceable and don’t require any additional fees.
What gives it value?
- It has fast transaction speeds and low transaction fees.
- It has a capped supply of 184 billion coins.
- It is private and fungible.
Interesting Technology:
- It is the first cryptocurrency to utilise CryptoNote technology, which is a hash-based proof of work (PoW) protocol used to form a consensus on its network.
- Cryptonight is a memory-bound function that distributes mining across a network of participants. It is purpose built to make it difficult for expensive ASIC devices to dominate with mining power. It does this by splitting the processing power between the GPU and CPU, which most people have access to through their own computers.
- A Ring Signature is a kind of digital signature that is attached to several other random signatures from the Bytecoin blockchain, as decoys to hide the true identity of who sent the transaction.
- Stealth Addresses hide the identity of the sender and receiver by acting as a single-use bridging-address that is destroyed once the transaction is complete.
Notable team:
- The development team is anonymous. No one knows who they are.
- Jenny Goldberg is the community relations manager at Bytecoin.org and the only public representative that is known of.
Notable partnerships:
- Trust. Zone VPN internet security services allow customers to pay for its products with Bytecoin.
Bytecoin Review: The Good
- It’s private.
- It’s fungible.
- It’s fast.
- Low transaction fees.
Bytecoin Review: The Not So Good
- Prior to being launched, it is alleged around 80% of Bytecoin was ‘pre-mined’ before it was made available to the public. These pre-mined coins were distributed amongst the founders, developers, and stakeholders.
- If so many coins were pre-mined and are in the control of unknown individuals who could manipulate the price, then Bytecoin could essentially be centralised.
- The development team is unknown.
Future Roadmap:
- A new hard fork in late 2018 to upgrade the network.
- Continued partnerships and marketing around the world.
CONCLUSION:
In my opinion, Bytecoin has fantastic technology that serves a useful purpose when it comes to fast, fungible, and private digital cash. However, with no identifiable team and a tarnished reputation from its alleged pre-mining scandal, Bytecoin appears to be inferior to the other coins that were forked from it.
Bytecoin Price:
The current Bytecoin price, market cap and charts.
Local exchanges:
Coinspot: www.coinspot.com.au
Overseas exchanges:
Poloniex: https://poloniex.com/
Changelly: https://changelly.com/
Where to store this crypto:
Desktop wallet: https://bytecoin.org/downloads
Online wallet: https://bytecoin.org/downloads
Mobile wallet: https://bytecoin.org/downloads
Similar coins:
Aeon (Aeon) – Hard-fork of Bytecoin.
Monero (XMR) – Hard-fork of Bytecoin.
Dash (Dash) – Another private digital cash.
Further information:
Whitepaper: https://bytecoin.org/resources/whitepaper.pdf
Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/BytecoinBCN/
Website: https://bytecoin.org/
