Bitcoin Forum

Back in 2017 a hyped up trend started where people kept creating copies of bitcoin and called them bitcoin something (like bitcoin gold for example), sold it to newbies, pumped and dumped it a little and pocketed the money.
All of these coins are useless, weak with security flaws, without any innovation or future and only get some pump and dumps every now and then.

Among these altcoins there is a notorious one that has been scamming a lot of newcomers by telling them it is "bitcoin". This shitcoin is called "bitcoin cash" with the ticker "BCH". This altcoin is owned and controlled by centralized entities one of whom owns a high ranking website called bitcoin.com which is one of the main places that scammed newcomers a lot in the past.
They went as far as changing the name of "bitcoin" to something else while calling their own shitcoin which they sold to newbies "bitcoin". See the screenshot below:
https://i.imgur.com/Q639aTC.jpg


With that background out of the way, the reason I started this topic is that as bitcoin price is going up and it gains more popularity a lot of newcomers are starting to come into this community and many of them seek to buy bitcoin.
These days I am seeing an increased activity from the same scammers who are repeating their scam all over again by trying to sell their shitcoin to newcomers by disguising it as "real bitcoin".

Be very careful who you trust and where you buy your bitcoins from.
Wallets[1] listed on bitcoin.org and exchanges[2] there are the safer options to use. Also you should always do some research into each of them before you jump in. Search the name of the exchange for feedbacks, start a new topic asking whether it is trustworthy or not, ...

[1] https://bitcoin.org/en/choose-your-wallet
[2] https://bitcoin.org/en/exchanges

Regarding wallets - I would include to verify the signature that was on the individual sites against each wallet.

For example if one is choosing Electrum then it does not matter if you are downloading it from official Electrum website (https://electrum.org/#download) or going through bitcoin.org (https://bitcoin.org/en/wallets/desktop/windows/electrum/?step=5&platform=windows) or having a copy from a friend or from any other website, always have the PGP signature and verify it against the core developer team. If verification fails then you have fake copy and do not risk yourself to install a fake copy of a bitcoin wallet client. To newcomers of course.

Thanks for this..  How do they even come out with that wallet...
Bitcoin- bitcoin core
Bitcoin cash- bitcoin
Scammers way...

Bitcoin.com is a big problem for bitcoin. Anyone seeing the dot com over a brand name will believe it more than the dot org. I still don't get why developers didn't buy it back in 2010 and redirect it to bitcoin.org. Right now we have 2 different "bitcoins". The original from .org and the shitcoin cash from .com.

They're so pathetic. They've named "Bitcoin" the bitcoin cash and "Bitcoin Core" the original!

Something about real bitcoin and "buying just a name" must be said also.

Before doing any purchase, check what you buy and what you will hold. For example on PayPal you don't really buy bitcoin, but you buy and hold just a name. If you buy there, you don't really have a bitcoin, because you don't have or own an address where Bitcoin is stored. You can't transfer it to other bitcoin owners address.

It is logical that there can be only one original, everything else is copies that only their owners call the originals and something that is actually a real BTC. The only thing they are competitive with is the price, which is often one of the reasons why beginners buy this cheap fake BTC - and to make the problem even bigger, we have this damn page that promotes it and has a very high rank when it comes to search engines.

However, even if someone buys such a fake BTC, the thing can always be fixed by selling it - because I think that sooner or later most people must realize that something is wrong, especially if they look at the price.

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I think that domain changed hands several times, and it was only in 2014 that it came into the possession of Bitcoin Judas Roger Ver, and for a time it was managed by OKCoin. Unfortunately, from 2017 it serves to promote the most famous fork as a real BTC - and so it will be until the owner changes.

One of scam I learned from 2017 hype is scammers sell their bit but the buyers naively think they are buying bitcoin.  :-\

Newbies don't know difference between bitcoin and bit as well as don't know the bitcoin units. Bit is one of bitcoin units

• Bitcoin Units (from bitcoin.it wiki) (https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Units)
• One bit (micro bitcoin -- μBTC) equals to 0.000001 Bitcoin
• Also the testnet abused by scammers: Bitcoin Testnet. Activate, experience it, but don't trade and get scammed. (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5215716.0)
• In 2020, I knew the shit altcoin that tries to say it is Bitcoin 2.0, namely Bitcoin Vault (BTCV) (https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/bitcoin-vault/)

That's very misleading to newbies as some might fall for the wrong coin, and worst is if they hold it and expect that it's the real bitcoin.
I have known a lot of people that does not even understand what bitcoin is, they thought bitcoin is a ponzi because these ponzi scammers are also using the name of bitcoin, maybe not popular in the crypto space, or in this forum but in our community (real world), there's a lot of scammers trying to take advantage on greedy investors who does not even research hard what is bitcoin.

The domain bitcoin.com had already been purchased by an unaffiliated entity prior to the bitcoin whitepaper being published. Roger Ver initially bought it over in 2014, long before BCash existed. He leased it out to the OKCoin exchange for a while, before turning it in to the scam site it is today after the BCash fork. He is unlikely to sell it anytime soon, as using it to scam newbies in to buying his dying shitcoin continues to make him money.

Not the first time and won't be the last. They know their coin can't stand on its own (lack of) merits, so their main marketing target is to disguise it as a different coin - bitcoin - which is actually useful, secure, and hasn't been successfully 51% attacked.

Man. I hadn't looked at the price of BCash in long time, but it is dying. The whole month of November it has just been hitting new all time lows pretty much every day. I remember selling my forked coins for almost 0.2 BTC each - now they are worth less than 0.015 BTC. That's an almost 93% decrease, and continuing to fall.

There's one thing that I can't get clear on.
Basically, nobody claims any rights to the name "Bitcoin", right? No trademarks, brands or related registrations? So anyone can make 'a new coin' and market it as "Bicoin"?
Well that sounds really awful...

I remember when it was very close to the price of the original BTC, somewhere around $3000 and that was the best time to sell it - and I have to admit that I haven’t sold it yet, I almost forgot that I have it. Its current price is just under $300, but it is still in the TOP 10 according to CMC, which just means there are still those who believe in the project.

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That's right, the name Bitcoin is not protected globally, but this year one person protected it at national level in Spain (https://cointelegraph.com/news/bitcoin-name-and-logo-registered-with-spanish-patent-and-trademark-office). Surely the situation with all this forked BTC would be much better if the name was protected, so we can ask the question why no one did it, maybe no one could have predicted that there would be so many copies?

Or the founder/s thought having a Bitcoin or bitcoin trademark is against the nature of the blockchain and coin which is supposed to be decentralized?

It's wired really. I have agreed with Lucius that maybe none think that we could see so many copy projects. Recently most of the projects are coping/targeting an old project. Now, who will take an action against it?  Bitcoin creator is now hidden. So I think none will take this action to protect the name of Bitcoin. And a lot of projects are waiting for us which is name ****Bitcoin.  ::)

This is not new, from early days when bitcoin was created they have been copying bitcoin. The oldest standing copy coin today is called Litecoin which was copied from bitcoin (it still copies every code that bitcoin core team pushes to their repository). But in early days they used a different name and didn't copy its blockchain, also they had some new thoughts of their own (eg. LTC changed PoW algorithm, difficulty, supply for the first time) but nowadays the copycoins have nothing new.

As for the name, we can't have both decentralization and claims over the name. Even if Satoshi were still around there was nothing he could do about it since he doesn't own the Bitcoin!

Why no one has taken Bitcoin.com to the court over this clearly scammy behavior? I'm not a lawyer, but shouldn't there be some sort of way to argue that Bitcoin is an implicit trademark, and selling the same type of good under the same name is a serious trademark violation. Maybe Roger Ver has some legal right to say that bcash is Bitcoin, but he absolutely shouldn't be able to present it as such on his trading platform, because it causes real financial damage.

Well, if we agree that decentralization and name protection at the global level has never been an option, what do you think of the case that happened in Spain (link in my previous post), where the name and logo of BTC is protected on national level? What are the implications there if someone now tries to abuse a Bitcoin name or logo? I guess then the person who protected the name and logo can sue anyone who in some way abuses what is protected - and what would be interesting to know in this case is how this protection affects all existing BTC forks traded in Spain?

@DdmrDdmr could perhaps have some more specific information.

It sounds pretty much, stretching the distance, like when one purchases a domain in hope of it getting a pretty penny from someone who needs that domain later on. Probably a long shot, with no real practical echo (besides briefly appearing on the press).

I’ve looked at the case’s status here: http://consultas2.oepm.es/ceo/jsp/busqueda/consultaExterna.xhtml?numExp=M4046141

The historical shows that on the 07/07/2020, somebody opposed the brand being registered as a trademark, but was seemingly late for the deadline.
On the 11/08/2020, someone proceeded to appeal the concession, probably thorough a different legal procedure than above.

There's no more detail on the matter, but it does seems like a freak attempt to end-up making some cash (or Bitcoin).

What about paypal? Someone made a thread in bitcoin discussion board and told a story about his friend buying bitcoin in the platform. He was stating that it isn't real bitcoin that paypal has been selling. I want to confirm if it was true or not for there are many users here that are actually using the paypal platform. Hopefully, someone can check using their paypal accounts to verify all of this and give a feedback. Thanks!

There is another big problem nobody notices, besides the bitcoin-dot-com name:

Craig Wright must be spending big on SEO. Recently I searched for some bitcoin information. (not saying search term, to not give faketoshi scammers any tips.) SERP position #2 was a page from a so called "Bitcoin Wiki" at a BSV scam site. SERP position #3 was the real Bitcoin Wiki.

I urge anyone with real SEO skills to evaluate the search engine influence of real Bitcoin sites vs scam sites

real Bitcoin vs BCH sites
real Bitcoin vs BSV sites

real Bitcoin information sitse have the problem, many are made by volunteer effort. Core developers focus on code and protocol improvements. Bitcoiners focus on talking about Bitcoin. Scammers put resources on domain names, SEO... what brings in the new money from people who don't know any better


There is no such thing as an "implicit trademark" owned by no identifiable entity.. owned by nobody?


see:
http://cypherspace.org/CPL/

We could argue about this if it's good or bad, but I am not interested.


maybe he meant "not your keys, not your coins" .
I hope that's what he meant.

Paypal is offering Bitcoin (BTC) but also scam (BCH). hmm.

https://bitcoinmagazine.com/articles/palling-up-to-crypto-could-paypals-bitcoin-accommodation-lead-to-widespread-adoption

Lol, this is a important topic though, it seems wickedly funny! It's a good thing you thought of this and had to make emphasis on it because, a lot of persons might not know the difference between Bitcoin and Bitcoin cash. They almost assume in one instant based on any that they are approached first with to be Bitcoin. Having no prior knowledge of what bitcoin is. But there is really a difference, one is more valuable than the other. Should you @newbies & Beginners have any prior knowledge of bitcoin with regards to it's value or price, it could be a determinant for which is which.
Bitcoin is top coin with a price fluctuation around $18k currently so, when buy a coin, check its current price and from that, the relativism could be determined.

This is a really important topic. Surely there are some Brand name or Trade mark experts here who can shed some light on this situation.
For example, isn't there some legal entity that can protect a Bitcoin name in some sort of trademark?

Owner of bitcoin.com: Roger Ver (MemoryDealers) (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=10310), very distrusted person (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=trust;u=10310)

People should stop to link it. I just saw some person warn about scam, link to bitcoin.com article about scam, send people to other scam.


::)




No.

Bitcoin has no central authority. Nobody controls Bitcoin. Advantages , disadvantages and tradeoffs.

This is one of the most important thing that newbies should understand, how to differentiate the real Bitcoin to a forked one, because not all of these with Bitcoin extension have the same value as the real one, they should always familiarize themselves not only on the logo but the ticker as well and also the histories of all these Bitcoin forks.

It is not only about Bitcoin and Bitcoin Cash. I thought the warning has its expansion to abundant forks or clones of bitcoin are available on the market. Being scammed by though Bitcoin forks are bitcoin is stupid but some people were not scammed like that. They did knew the coin they invested in are not bitcoin but they believe the shit forks they invested in will have high value, a few dollars, a few hundred of dollar. They knew difference in names (tickers), accepted risks and had faith in shit clones.

Also worth to mentioned the thousands of newbies who fall for the trap of thinking they got bitcoin send it to a bitcoin address and then problem starts to realised that it was BCH and not BTC. Specially if these newbies uses a custodial wallets in which there's no way they can get the private key, so obviously they've lost their money.

All I can derive from the site you linked is "open source" so no argument needed there.

It is much more than that.

Cypherpunks Public License is from cypherpunks, a part of the history leading up to Bitcoin. For more general information, see: Bitcoin: The dream of Cypherpunks, libertarians and crypto-anarchists (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5255623.0)

On the topic here: "Open source" is often copyrighted. Bitcoin source code is MIT licensed. Legally, it is copyrighted code with an original author of unknown identity, pseudonym "Satoshi Nakamoto".

CPL is not directly applicable to Bitcoin. But in the abstract, it shows concepts that answer the question of who can defend the Bitcoin name. Nobody controls Bitcoin. There is no legal Bitcoin trademark, and no entity with proprietary right to hold a trademark on the name "Bitcoin".

It would be dangerous if such an entity existed. Craig Wright has tried fraudulently claiming copyright of Bitcoin source code. If he could, he would probably claim trademark on "Bitcoin" name for his scam.

I myself disagree with CPL in some parts. But it succinctly summarizes the key concepts here.


Not a random site. It is the old personal website of Adam Back, the inventor of Hashcash (as cited in the Bitcoin Whitepaper, footnote 6). There is stuff there very interesting to history that led to the creation of Bitcoin.

As the technology still involving there's nothing as such, there have been series of fork from Bitcoin Blockchain and most them are clone of the original Bitcoin. Any coin with the Bitcoin are cloned coins from the Blockchain and shouldn't be recognize as the original Bitcoin. Any cryptocurrency brand can take after Bitcoin name without any legal issue, this mean, cryptocurrency communities should be more vigilant when it come to brands with Bitcoin name, most especially newbies among the communities.

There is a lot of confusion among beginners in this area. I know it will sound unreal to some, but I also only recently discovered that bitcoin.com is not an official website of Bitcoin and also, that blockchain.com is a company and is not the same as Bitcoin Blockchain technology.

Well, you know how they say, "Live and learn". :D

Sure, there are plenty of bitcoin forks out there, but the difference is that none of them pretend to be BTC like BCash does. Bitcoin Gold, Bitcoin Private, even Bitcoin SV to an extent, present and market themselves as different coins. Even although Bitcoin SV falsely claims to be the original implementation of bitcoin, it doesn't pretend to be BTC. BCash is far more insidious in this manner. The entire continued existence of this scam coin hinges on fooling newbies in to thinking they are buying real bitcoin when in fact they are buying a useless altcoin.

He has tried similar stunts in the past. He filed forms with the US Copyright Office to try to claim ownership of the original whitepaper and the original bitcoin code, while trying to hide the fact that filing these forms is as simple as filling them in and paying $45. The backlash from it even prompted the US Copyright Office to release a statement basically calling him out for being the fraud that he is, saying that "The Copyright Office does not investigate the truth of any statement made."

Note: A longer version of the following was deleted three times by moderators. I now cut the scam documentation below, on hypothesis that something in it triggered a spam filter bot (probably necessary - and I think deletion was faster than humans report or respond).

My apologies for the noise, for those who get new posts mailed. I had "*" all PM blocked, so I didn't realize - that is why I reposted. The first time, I thought I must have hit the delete button by accident when trying to edit, correct quoting mistake. After repost disappeared, I unblocked PM, tried again, got PM notice and confirmed in modlog.


Unfortunately, in the substance, BSV is even worse than BCH. They don't claim to be "BTC". They claim that BTC is a scam, there is only one Bitcoin, the one and only Bitcoin is BSV. How far they go turning truth to lies, lies to truth? They present Faketoshi as a reluctant hero, returned to save Bitcoin from the BTC fake-coin scammers. "After a period of denial, Dr. Wright admitted that he is Satoshi Nakamoto" - see below.

BCH is bad enough scam, exploiting Roger Ver registration of bitcoin dot com domain. BSV is badder, bolder, more brazen.

BSV propaganda turns everything upside-down and inside-out. The BSV scammers accuse others of their own wrongdoing. They say that BTC is the scam, BSV is the real Bitcoin by "Dr. Craig Wright a.k.a. Satoshi Nakamoto".

note: next activity period begins 2020-12-16T03:40:00Z. After this, I will make Jr. so my embedded images will show! For now, I ask to people >= Jr. Member rank: please Sir, quote me so others can see the important images.

This is cropped from a BSV propaganda image, displayed in full below, I found on the BSV shill thread:
https://i.imgur.com/HUwSXQt.jpg

As you can see, not only it claims BSV is Bitcoin. It claims that BTC is *not* Bitcoin. They say that BSV is the one and only real Bitcoin, on authority of (fake) Satoshi Nakamoto himself.

On the main BSV shill thread on this forum, they also have a small army of sockpuppet shill accounts... who accuse everybody else of being sockpuppet "trolls". I have seen BitcoinFX, Cryptotourist, JayJuanGee, and nullius all accused of being sockpuppets of the same "troll". If o_e_l_e_o posts in that thread, he will immediately be called sockpuppet of nullius, inter alia. It shows the extremes of BSV total inversion of the truth. Same as they do with identifying "real Bitcoin".

The following excerpt from a much longer post was selected carefully by me. Please read it carefully to understand how deeply, subtly insidious this propaganda is. Text size is in the BSV post.
...snnnnniiiippp...

Image quoted as requested. I also read your full post, as archived here: https://loyce.club/archive/posts/5573/55739070.html

I do not disagree at all with your assessment of BSV and the criminal identity thief CSW. My point was simply that if someone buys BSV, they are making a decision to buy BSV. Their decision is a stupid one, and is based on lies and propaganda pushed by criminals and scammers, but it is their decision nonetheless.

On the other hand, a large number of people who buy BCash have not made the decision to buy BCash. They have made the decision to buy bitcoin, and instead have been tricked in to buying BCash, which they only realize when it gets lost in some exchange's BTC deposit address.

BSV is undoubtedly an enormous scam, and CSW is undoubtedly an enormous fraud, but BCH has scammed more newbies out of their money than BSV has.

What o_e_l_e_o and other are trying to say is that Bitcoin SV is not pretending to be something else, they claim to be representing something.
While not an obvious difference at first it would be like Pepsi starting a new drink and forcing a store to advertise it like
- Coca Cola while the original would be labeled Coke
- Pepsi-Cola and claiming to be the original flavor after the original recipe

Obvious the first one is ten times worse, the second is just a claim the consumer has the choice to believe or disregard but at no point is he mislead by the wrong labeling of the products. Of course, just because the others are doing worse things does not exonerate CSW from his own but lately, I see him quite as a harmless moron compared to the ones behind BCH.

Well the situation with bcashsv is not as bad as bcash but the nature of the scam is the same. They may not sell bcashsv as "bitcoin" but they are selling it to newbies as "the real bitcoin". They have both said it directly that "bitcoin SV is the real bitcoin" and all over their website it is convincing those who are new that it is the "real bitcoin".

Don't get me started on "Satoshi's vision" which is the most absurd thing they claim with that picture that was posted above which is a big fat lie since their fork is completely different  from the "original" protocol. I can think of at least 30 major protocol changes that weren't in original protocol. And removed SegWit my ass, this is BIP143 aka Transaction Signature Verification for Version 0 Witness Program
 (https://github.com/bitcoin-sv/bitcoin-sv/blob/9e144729c7a22507603386bb2fe3dd88b0e35537/src/script/interpreter.cpp#L1853-L1903) right there in its code copied from bitcoin core, whenever you create a new tx in bcashsv network!

I also say some makes coin bitcoin silver or btcs as they say, then make it as an airdrop, they will give like a couple of thousand pieces of it and to have the coin you need to deposit 3 dollars in BTC, for newcomers op is right don't just buy make sure it bitcoin, and not other coins, who will just steal money from you.

Man, This makes my blood boil. I don't know why but this makes me so angry. Their using the new crypto users and take advantage of them to make money. This is just giving bad experience to people and hurts Bitcoin's reputation.