Bitcoin's latest fork is just weeks away and this one's a little different from the rest. Rather than simply tinkering with Segwit or adjusting block sizes, Bitcoin private (BTCP) is adding zk-Snarks. The privacy enhancing feature is best known for its use in the Z family of coins including zcash, zclassic, and zencash. That's not surprising given that the fork is being instigated by Rhett Creighton, who is simultaneously forking bitcoin and zclassic on February 28 to create BTCP which will then be available to holders of both coins.

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The Quest to Make Bitcoin Private Again

Like all forks, bitcoin private is not without its controversies. Bitcoin's underlying code hasn't changed greatly over the years, but the ability of law enforcement, the IRS, and other busybodies to scrutinize blockchain activity has. Whereas once bitcoin could be used on the deep web and elsewhere with a reasonable assumption of privacy, doing so today is fraught with risks. The rise of privacy coins such as monero is a direct response to this gradual erosion of privacy.

On February 28, a snapshot of the zclassic and bitcoin blockchains will be taken and holders of each cryptocurrency will be eligible for bitcoin private, distributed at a 1:1 ratio, once the BTCP mainnet launches a couple of days later. A total of 20 million coins will be created by combining the circulating supply of BTC and ZCL. When the fork was announced late last year, it caused the prize of zclassic to shoot up from around $4 on December 22 to its current price of around $97. For anyone interested in claiming their maximum allocation of bitcoin private, it makes sense to load up on zclassic given that even at $100 it is orders of magnitude cheaper than bitcoin. As the date of the hard fork looms closer, zclassic is likely to rise further still.