Here’s Why ZClassic (ZCL) Is Running Right Now

ZClassic (ZCL) is up more than 35% over the last twenty-four hours versus the USD and up more than 43% in relation to bitcoin. The coin is trading for a market capitalization of $63 million as of today (morning, US, December 28) and across the last twenty-four-hour period, against a backdrop of the just mentioned increase in price, more than $39 million worth of ZCL has changed hands over the various exchanges on which it’s traded.

ZCL Daily Chart

In other words, something is getting markets excited about ZCL right now and it’s causing a wave of speculative volume to flow towards the coin.

What is getting markets excited and what does it mean? In other words, is it sustainable and can it support continued advance?

Let’s take a look.

This one is a privacy type coin that was set up on the back of a fork of the Zcash blockchain. Many reading will likely be already familiar with Zcash but, for anyone that isn’t, it’s defined as a cryptocurrency aimed at using cryptography to provide enhanced privacy for its users compared to other cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin.

Basically (there’s no real need for us to go into the protocols that underpin this technology for the purposes of this discussion), Zcash uses a masking type technology that serves to hide certain details associated with a transaction while, at the same time, maintaining certain elements of the transparency that’s associated with bitcoin.

Specifically, everything is recorded on the blockchain and anyone using an explorer can see that a transaction took place but they can’t see who is on either side of the transaction (i.e. who sent the ZEC, in the case of a Zcash transaction and who received it) or how much was sent.

So why did ZClassic decide to fork the Zcash chain?

Because while Zcash was designed to fix some of the privacy issues associated with BTC, there were a number of undesirable elements built into its protocol.

One of these was that the founders of Zcash take 20% of the rewards (the rewards that, in bitcoin, are paid to miners) for the first 4 years subsequent to release, leading to 10% control of the entire monetary supply.

Another is that there is a slow start system built into Zcash, which would essentially make it very slow and difficult to mine the first 20,000 blocks, leading to a potentially artificially inflated market price.

ZClassic got rid of these features.

That’s a bit of background, what’s making the coin run now?

The team just announced that it’s forking again to create what’s going to be called Bitcoin Private. This is going to work (basically) in the same way that ZClassic works but will be rebranded as above.

What does this have to do with anyone buying ZCL?

Anyone that owns ZCL at the time of the fork will receive BCTP (which is the ticker being used to refer to the upcoming Bitcoin Private) on a ration of 1:1. Markets are assuming, therefore, that there’s going to be a dramatic increase in price on the BTCP as and when they hit exchanges and that, through ZCL, there’s an easy way to pick up plenty of BTCP incredibly cheap.

So is this a genuine opportunity?

Well, yes and no. If it plays out as described above, then yes. However, we don’t know when (or even if) the major exchanges are going to support this fork (i.e. whether they will issue BTCP to anyone holding BTC or ZCL at the projected ratio) and, as such, there’s a risk built into any position held in ZCL ahead of the fork.

With that said, it could be well worth a punt given the upside potential at current ZCL prices.

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Disclaimer: This article should not be taken as, and is not intended to provide, investment advice. Please conduct your own thorough research before investing in any cryptocurrency.

Image courtesy of ZClassic