While these splits have been widely criticised by purists – known in the crypto community as Bitcoin maximalists, as we’ll see below – forking lies in the very nature of Bitcoin.
And so, starting in 2011, new cryptocurrencies began popping up. Initially, projects began by forking Bitcoin’s codebase (but without necessarily splitting the existing network), tweaking certain aspects of Bitcoin but not going too far from the original design.
These new projects were given the name of “altcoins” – still used today to refer to any cryptocurrency other than Bitcoin.
One of the first such forks was Litecoin (LTC), which was designed to be “the silver to Bitcoin’s gold”, as per the words of its creator, Charlie Lee. As of today, Litecoin sits outside the top 20 coins in terms of market capitalisation for all cryptocurrencies, gradually declining in significance having been 3rd behind Bitcoin and Ethereum.
On the more contentious side, we’ve learned how Bitcoin Cash split from Bitcoin, spurring a new way of bootstrapping a new network by taking advantage of the existing network with the dubious promise of “free money.”
Dozens of other projects followed suit, like Bitcoin Gold, Bitcoin Diamond, Super Bitcoin, Bitcoin Atom, and many more – but most of them achieved very limited success.
But forks can cut both ways. Ironically, Bitcoin Cash itself suffered a contentious hard fork in 2018, when one of its main advocates, controversial figure Craig Wright, broke up with the BCH core team and branched out – leading to Bitcoin SV (BSV).
There are literally hundreds of forks and forks of forks – not just from Bitcoin, but from other cryptocurrencies such as Ethereum or Ripple. And this list just keeps growing.
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