Bitcoin Private Fork Facing ZClassic Withdrawal Issues at Exchanges
It has been an interesting past month for Zclassic. This ZCash fork has seen an incredible rise in the price of its token on news that it would rebrand itself to Bitcoin Private.
This was also meant to be more than a mere change in the name. This would involve changing the underlying Zclassic protocol which would mean that the coin would have to go through a hardfork.
The planned hard fork will occur on the 28th of February but there are a number of problems that the team had not foreseen. One of these relates to the Cryptopia exchange as they are suffering from withdrawal issues of Zclassic.
Cryptopia Sticking Points
Cryptopia is often seen as the exchange of last resort where coin developers can get their coin listed. It is probably for this reason that the Zclassic community was really keen on sorting the issue out. Yet, as the Zclassic team has communicated, this was a problem on Cryptopia's end.
Apart from the simple connectivity to the Cryptopia exchange, users were having other issues when it came to withdrawal limits. Cryptopia has daily withdrawal limits of 5,000 NZD which is problematic for those users who have considerably larger holdings and do not want to verify their accounts.
Given the monumental rise that we have seen in the price of Cryptopia recently, there are no doubt many people who fall into this category. Some have decided to try their chances and sold their holdings on Cryptopia to buy them again on Bittrex.
The team at Zclassic tried to nail down the exact issue that Cryptopia were having that was impeding the withdrawals. In this Reddit post they gave their view as to what could be causing the problem.
To be clear, we cannot know for 100% certainty what issue they are having, however, based on the fact that they have 0 node connections, we believe they need to update their node list
In a response to the Reddit post, a user stated that they had been in contact with Cryptopia on Facebook. They had said that the node issue should be fixed in 3-4 days.
Updates on Fork Development
It seems as if the team working on Zcash may not have anticipated the amount of work that would need to be completed post the fork. This is because the project recently sent out a tweet to the community asking for developer applications.
Of course, one has to wonder why the team is only reaching out now for developers to help them expand the project. Does this mean that they do not have the required talent currently in order to carry out the fork effectively?
There are also concerns that any Bitcoin fork that tries to label itself as Bitcoin "X" will face more scrutiny from the Bitcoin community. We have seen this recently with the great deal of animosity that the Bitcoin Community has for Bitcoin cash.
However, Bitcoin Private has set up their own marketing team to make sure that they get the right narrative on why they are forking Bitcoin and the benefits that Bitcoin Private can offer.
They have branded themselves as the anonymous counterpart to Bitcoin as the demand for privacy conscious coins becomes more evident. Although Bitcoin is the most popular coin, all of that attention has attracted a great deal of scrutiny from governments and other organisations.
Getting Your Bitcoin Private
Under the rules of the fork, there will be an airdrop of Bitcoin private in a 1:1 ratio to both Bitcoin and Zclassic holders. Hence, if you hold 1 BTC and one ZCL you will then have the right to two Bitcoin Private (BPI).
As with all of the previous Bitcoin forks, it is important for the holder to hold the private keys to the coins in question just prior to the fork. Hence, if they are on an exchange then it is not likely that the holder will be able to claim their new BPI.
This is the reason that a large number of Zclassic holders are desperately trying to get their coins out of Cryptopia prior the 28th of Feb. It is unlikely that Cryptopia will reimburse holders for Zclassic that is stuck on the exchange.
One can only hope that Cryptopia is able to fix the withdrawal issues and that the holders are able to extract their coins well in advance of the anticipated fork date.
Disclaimer: These are the writer’s opinions and should not be considered investment advice. Readers should do their own research.
