As any regular in the crypto market will tell you,
As any regular in the crypto market will tell you, altcoins have been dime a dozen this past year and the last. We have seen countless forks of the open source Bitcoin core client being introduced in the market, to serve as peer-to-peer cash systems with enhanced features. These enhanced features often build upon the foundation laid down by Bitcoin. There are many cons and pros of Bitcoin and these forks seek to tackle the cons. One of them is Bitcoin diamond and in this article, we will have a quick look at what it is and what its salient features are.
What is Bitcoin Diamond?
When the Bitcoin blockchain was its 495,866th block, a fork in the source code led to the creation of Bitcoin Diamond, resulting in every erstwhile holder of BTC (Bitcoin) getting BCD or Bitcoin Diamond. At this point, as a consequence of the fork, a new blockchain arose from the original. While the Bitcoin cryptocurrency has a hard cap, Bitcoin Diamond has the cap set at 210 million. The concept of a blockchain fork means that in this case, the two coins would have a shared transactional history till the point where BCD branched out. As for what is hard fork, it is a fairly simple concept to grasp and quite a necessity in the crypto world today.
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Bitcoin Diamond: Salient Features
Bitcoin Diamond was developed by two factions within the Bitcoin community called the Team Evey and Team 007 who disagreed with many aspects of how Bitcoin was being operated and run. Hence they introduced a hard fork that caused BCD to have the following salient features:
1. A Larger Block of the Bitcoin Diamond:
While Bitcoin has a maximum block size set at a meagre 1 MB, Bitcoin Diamond raises the bar with a maximum block size of 8 MB. Naturally, this helps to ensure that transactions are processed and validated much faster than is the case with Bitcoin itself. This pushes the limits of a cryptocurrency’s operational efficiency. With lower transaction time, costs are also kept at a minimal level.
2. A High Supply Cap of Bitcoin Diamond:
The fact that Bitcoin Diamond has set the supply cap at 210 million makes it a great option for micropayments as a high hard cap keeps the prices at an easily affordable level.
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3. Ease of Mining with Bitcoin Diamond:
Unlike Bitcoin, where miners are required to invest in a great deal of expensive, noisy and heavy computing equipment, Bitcoin Diamond allows miners to enjoy sufficient levels of ease with a less resource intensive mining model.
The Road Ahead for Bitcoin Diamond
Bitcoin Diamond has had a hard timing winning the trust of the crypto community at large with quite a bit of delay it faced in incorporating the LN layer or the Lightning Network to make the blockchain faster and more efficient. It has not seen many dramatic price changes either. There remains a lot to be achieved by Bitcoin Diamond still. Even as other Bitcoin forks have been doing well, especially with the future of Bitcoin Cash and Bitcoin Gold looking bright, it seems BCD really needs to buck up.
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