Zclassic Continues to Crash as Bitcoin Private Fork Looms

The Bitcoin Private hardfork is now upon us. Within the next few hours we should expect to see the airdrop that will be given to those who hold both Bitcoin and Zclassic.

It was not all plain sailing as Zclassic was facing withdrawal issues at the Cryptopia exchange. Cryptopia was not going to honour the airdrop so users would not get much benefit from having the coins on exchange.

Now it seems as if there is another problem that is plaguing the holders of Zclassic: the price. ZCL is still falling as we get closer to the fork. This is indeed surprising as pre hardfork coins are usually known to rally.

We saw this recently with the increase in price of Litecoin and the Litecoin cash fork as well as the rally in Bitcoin last November on the SegWit2X rally.

There are many ZCL holders now who are wondering exactly what gives.

ZCL Pump Then Dump

ZClassic has had quite an impressive price rally recently. Ever since the rebranding announcement, the price of ZCL has gone from a mere $4 to over $180 at a time. Below we have the price movement over the past 3 months from Coinmarketcap.

Price of ZCL in 3 months. Source: Coinmarketcap.com

This could have been perpetuated by two factors. One could be those who are trying to get their hands on the coin in anticipation of the airdrop. The only way that someone can claim an airdropped coin is through a holding the coin in question.

However, there may also be another reason that the price has rallied so much. This could have been as a result of other opportunists who wanted to trade the coin while it was rallying towards the anticipated hardfork date.

These traders are the ones who are likely to have been impacted by the recent fall in the price of ZCL. They would have had no interest in claiming the Bitcoin private coin and were only holding the Zclassic. There were some estimates that Zclassic could rally upwards of $500.

Now it looks as if the price of Zlcassic will continue to fall as we approach the actual airdrop date. Those who hold the coins will claim their Bitcoin private and will then likely sell their Zclassic. Most of the developers will work on the new coin and Zclassic is likely to be abandoned.

Moreover, there appears to be some selling pressure that has come from those traders too. As they realised that their lofty ambitions for ZCL price were unrealistic, they began selling their coins.

Bitcoin Private Listings

So far, the only exchange that has stated that they will be listing Bitcoin Private is HitBTC. The Bitcoin private project has also stated that they would like to open their own decentralised exchange in order to facilitate the trading.

There are many who don't view this as much of an achievement and would like to see broader support. Some have been asking for a Binance exchange listing yet, there is unlikely to be much guidance on this as Binance does not disclose listing before the fact.

Another exchange that will not be honouring the Bitcoin private airdrop is Bittrex. They have claimed that they cannot take a snapshot of the Bitcoin wallets prior to the fork as this would lead to losses for the exchange.

Top Markets for Zclassic Trading. Source: Coinmarketcap.com

This is really unfortunate given that over 93% of all trading volume for Zclassic was on Bittrex. It also further adds weight to the argument that most of buyers who were driving up the price of Zclassic were traders hoping to ride the hardfork wave.

Do We Really Need Bitcoin Private?

There are many in the crypto community who are questioning the need for another privacy conscious cryptocurrency. There are so many coins currently that all seem to offer their own unique benefits for privacy.

This is something that was also picked up by Vitalik Buterin when he responded to someone else’s tweet about Bticoin private.

Zcash is the privacy coin that Zclassic originally forked from. The Zero knowledge proofs that are used in the Zcash protocol are seen by many cryptographers as the most advanced in the industry.

You also have other newer coins such as Verge (XVG) and Deeponion that are trying to break into the privacy coin market. Bitcoin private will therefore be entering a really saturated market place.

Hopefully those who wanted to claim their Bitcoin private coins have their ZCL and BTC safely stored off exchange. There is still the possibility that Bitcoin Private takes off and serves the holder well. Yet, like most Bitcoin forks, it has not been smooth sailing.

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