How's it going everyone.
It's Austin over here at the Crypto Playhouse and if you've been in the crypto space, you
probably saw last week's bit debacle over Charlie Lee, the Litecoin founder, called
out Lite Cash for being a scam and that was the first big fork away from the Litecoin
blockchain.
So we're gonna be taking a look at forks.
What are they?
Was Litecoin Cash really a scam and what do we have on the horizon for new forks around
the corner?
Alright, so before I get into the whole Charlie Lee, Litecoin, Litecoin Cash debacle that
occurred, I think everyone kind of needs to know what a fork is.
I see a lot of misinformation out there, people they think they understand the concept of
a fork.
It's just a new cryptocurrency breaking away, right?
Well the reality is there's a lot more to it than that.
There are soft forks and there are hard forks and basically the way to think of this is
that it's an upgrade either by staying on the chain and upgrading that chain or an upgrade
by taking a predetermined chain, adding your new code to it and moving away to a whole
new system.
So we've seen this historically.
Everyone's heard of Ethereum.
Ethereum Classic is actually the original Ethereum chain, but there were some issues
with the DAO fund and all that when it happened back about a year ago and basically, what
a hard fork is is you have your blockchain, it's coming along and somewhere around the
line, the community says �We wanna change things.�
So a hard fork basically says that they take that blockchain, they cut it right there and
Ethereum Classic, in this case, continued on on that original chain and Ethereum broke
away.
So everything up to that point, is just the same as Ethereum Classic, but everything moving
forward is a brand new set of code.
It's going to be different, so it's not backwards compatible, whereas a soft fork is basically
just a simple upgrade to the basic code of the blockchain and it is backwards compatible.
So that's the key thing to remember in this.
A lot of the big forks that you hear about, they're hard forks.
They take the prior chain, they write something in new and it becomes an entirely new currency
chain.
Alright, so most people in the crypt space have probably heard of Bitcoin Cash at some
point or another.
That's really the one big forked currency that people are aware of.
You think of a fork, that's what you kind of first go to if you're new in the crypto
space.
But as I mentioned before, Ethereum is actually the hard fork away from the original chain.
The same goes for Zcash and Zclassic situation.
So forks, even though people get up in arms about them, now they can actually be very
productive and in the past, with Ethereum and Zcash, it really made the community move
forward and it provided a better basis to work from, so I think it's important to remember
that people hear �fork� and it's almost become an ugly word.
But these things can be productive if they're executed correctly.
Now in terms of poor execution, this whole Litecoin cash that happened over the past
week.
Charlie Lee, the Litecoin founder, came out.
He called it a scam.
Personally, I don't think that was the greatest thing for him to do, because realistically,
is Litecoin Cash a scam?
I'll say it right now, �It's not!� It really isn't.
I think Charlie Lee heard that Litecoin was coming out.
They were hard forking from the Litecoin blockchain and the reality is when a currency forks off,
most of the time either the parent or the child currency carries the original chain's
name.
Is Litecoin Cash trying to steal Charlie Lee's fame and take away the Litecoin name?
They're really not.
They've said multiple times they have absolutely no association with the Litecoin team.
They're on their own.
They're doing their own thing.
They're just using the title because that happens to be the chain that they forked away
from.
So Charlie Lee's comments about it being a scam really overstated and I think it was
more frustration of the name being used than anything else.
And along with that, there were a lot of outcries from people saying, �Oh, you know, Litecoin
Cash is asking for your private keys.
It's gotta be a scam.
Don't do it!�
Really, if you've been in the crypto space long enough, guys this is how forks work.
It's really almost comical to me.
I have my Litecoin Cash.
I've claimed it.
I haven't lost any of my original Litecoin.
There's really no risk if you do it the right way.
Really all that you have to do is you just go and you move your Litecoin into an address
and when that snapshot is taken and it sees everyone that holds Litecoin at the moment
of the fork, your snapshot is there and the moment that it is over, you just take your
Litecoin and move it to another address.
Now when you put that private key out there to claim your Litecoin Cash, there's no risk
of losing your money, cuz there's no money in there.
And I saw so many people that said, �Oh, well they want my private keys.
I'm not gonna go in on this!�
Guys, you lost out on free tokens, a lot of free tokens.
Litecoin Cash was at 10-to-1 split, first currency I've ever seen do anything like that.
Now granted, a lot of exchanges haven't picked it up yet.
Yobit is the only one that has active trading offered, but they still have the doors closed
for deposits and withdrawals.
They're just dealing with internal Litecoin Cash.
But I can tell you, I've claimed it.
It's really there.
It's not a scam.
Will different exchanges and different platforms pick it up?
That's a question mark, but if you look at Coinbase, it took them over a year after the
fork to actually come in and establish Bitcoin Cash on their system.
So it's not too surprising.
A lot of people were up in arms about it.
I just want you guys to know.
If you went and you got your Litecoin Cash, good on you.
If you didn't, I'm sorry.
You lost out on some free coins there guys.
So Litecoin Cash and all of the kind of the big issues with that aside, obviously one
of the most commonly forked currencies, Bitcoin.
Bitcoin Cash, Bitcoin Gold, Bitcoin Diamond and now we've got another one coming!
Right around the corner, we have Bitcoin Private.
And this is actually a fork I'm really excited about.
I've never seen a team that executed a fork like this, so they're going to be going and
taking part of the Zclassic source code.
For those of you that don't know, Zcash and Zclassic are privacy-based coins and they're
actually going to be doing a dual fork.
So when this comes around and the Bitcoin Private snapshot is taken, you will actually
get a 1-to-1 forked coins of Bitcoin Private based on both your Zclassic and your Bitcoin
holdings, so if you have say 10 Zclassic in your wallet and 5 Bitcoin, you'll end up with
15 Bitcoin Private, which is a very interesting way of doing it.
I've never actually seen a fork that was performed this way, so that's gonna be an interesting
one to see how they pull this off.
And another one that we have right around the corner is Callisto.
And this is an Ethereum Classic fork, which is kind of funny since we've obviously have
had Ethereum fork away from Ethereum Classic.
But this is another one that they're kind of taking a different approach for it.
The Callisto chain is basically going to be a new way of testing out different systems,
new ideas on the Ethereum Classic chain.
So it's really almost like a test chain.
Granted, it will be used.
It will be active and there will be transactions happening, but there's gonna be a lot more
experimental stuff that's gonna be happening on Callisto, so that's gonna be one I'm definitely
gonna be keeping my eye on because, in this space, new revolutionary ideas can completely
change the way that we move forward with blockchain.
So Callisto can be a very, very promising project for those of those that are looking
for innovation and new ideas in the blockchain space.
Anyways, we wanna hear from you guys.
Have you participated in any of the recent or the past forks.
I was there for Bitcoin Gold.
Obviously Litecoin Cash.
Are you excited about some of the upcoming forks or are you kind of one of those people
that are skeptical of this constant forking.
I think that Bitcoin is one of those that takes a lot of flack for it.
People are kind of tired of seeing it, but personally I think it forces innovation.
You create a situation where people are looking for change and that's what forks do.
So you know?
Let us know in the comments.
Are you excited?
You're not excited?
Did you get quite a bit of money out of the most recent ones.
Any-who, let us know and also, just so you guys know, we are looking for some new strategic
partnerships in the crypto space.
If you have a new project, a new ICO.
If you're working on a DAP, let us know in the comments or send us an email.
We've love to work with you.
We've love to get possibly an interview or something like that.
We're always looking for new stuff.
So let us know guys.
Have a good one!