On November 24, 2017, Bitcoin Diamond occurred and had somewhat taken the crypto world by storm. Till this day, Bitcoin Diamond has remained one of the most controversial hard forks of Bitcoin.
What is Bitcoin Diamond?
Created by a small group of anonymous developers from Singapore, Bitcoin Diamond (BCD) markets itself as “The Better Bitcoin.” Bitcoin Diamond occurred when Bitcoin reached the block number 495,866 as a direct response to Bitcoin’s main drawbacks such as high transaction fees, long confirmation times, poor privacy protection, and somewhat inaccessible entry methods for new members.
How does Bitcoin Diamond work?
Bitcoin Diamond shares a lot of functions with its parent blockchain, the Bitcoin. Bitcoin Diamond is a decentralized network that offers users the possibility of exchanging value. For starters, Bitcoin Diamond has a block size 8-fold bigger than that of Bitcoin which means it’s more adequately equipped to sustain immense volumes of transactions on a daily basis.
It also features the same Proof of Work algorithm which means that mining is possible. Miners receive rewards for providing computing power necessary for transaction verification and block creation. Just like its parent blockchain, Bitcoin Diamond makes use of the Lightning Network to speed up transactions via off-chain transactions.
One of the biggest differences is that the team behind Bitcoin Diamond opted to move away from the SHA-256 algorithm since it was dominated by specialized ASIC miners, making Bitcoin more centralized than other cryptos. Bitcoin Diamond uses an in-house X-13 algorithm which is ASIC-resistant.
Since at the time Bitcoin Diamon was created, there were somewhere around 16,7 Bitcoins in existence, this means that there are somewhere 167 million BCDs created. These BCDs can still be claimed by those who hold Bitcoins. This ten-fold increase in the total supply of Bitcoin Diamonds makes the tokens cheaper, making them more accessible than Bitcoins.
The team behind Bitcoin Diamond
Bitcoin Diamond has one more similarity with Bitcoin, and that is the fact of the anonymous nature of its founding team. For Bitcoin, it was Satoshi Nakamoto (a pseudonym for a programmer or a group of programmers), but for Bitcoin Diamond, it’s “Evey” and “007.” The development team is actually comprised out of three programmers or three groups of programmers, one of which has even refrained from unraveling its pseudonym.
Advantages of Bitcoin Diamond
Sure, the BCD token may not be as strong as that of Bitcoin’s (ranked 35th on CoinMarketCap at the time of this writing) but, as a project, Bitcoin Diamond has a lot of advantages.
Since its algorithm is ASIC resistant, Bitcoin Diamond has played its part in decentralizing mining, making it more accessible to a wider audience. Since it’s so low value, Bitcoin Diamond offers a very cheap way of sending and receiving money.
Risks of Bitcoin Diamond
Bitcoin Diamond managed to improve upon the original Bitcoin design in some cases, but that doesn’t mean that the project is perfect. For starters, it’s important for any investor to realize the fact that Bitcoin Diamond is actually a very new project. Still, the BCD token is doing very well, especially considering the bearish market of 2018, but there’s really no way to tell what the future will bring.
As a potential investor, you also need to keep in mind that Bitcoin Diamond was designed to address some of the main drawbacks of Bitcoin which, as revolutionary was when it first came out, it’s now slowly but surely losing its power to newer coins. This might make Bitcoin Diamond as a somewhat risky long-term investment.
Is Bitcoin Diamond a better version of Bitcoin?
The simple answer is: YES! Since Bitcoin Diamond was born just to improve upon the core Bitcoin blockchain, we can safely say that it is a better version of Bitcoin, at least from a technical and a practical standpoint. Be that as it may, Bitcoin is still the world’s most influential, most popular, and most important cryptocurrency.
Final words
Bitcoin Diamond might seem like a very unusual project for any vary investor, especially because there isn’t that much information about the project or the team behind it. Its developers might remain cloaked in secrecy, but so did the creator of Bitcoin.
