To newcomers: make sure when you buy bitcoin you are buying bitcoin!

[Marvelman]

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?

[The-None-Above-All]

Owner of bitcoin.com: Roger Ver (MemoryDealers), very distrusted person

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.

One such new tactic implies that investors can buy or own shares in Bitcoin itself, as if it was a corporation. This tactic is for example part of an elaborate plot used by individuals behind an operation called Bitcoin Inc, to con ignorant investors into mistaking the operation for “the real Bitcoin”.

...

https://news.bitcoin.com/no-you-cant-buy-shares-in-bitcoin/
People needs to be careful, knowing what bitcoin is all about very well to not be a scam victim by people that take advantage of ignorant people.

isn't there some legal entity that can protect a Bitcoin name in some sort of trademark?

No.

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

[pilosopotasyo]

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!

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.

[hd49728]

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.

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.

[btc_angela]

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.

[Yogee]

....
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?

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

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

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

[The-None-Above-All]

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

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

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

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.

the site you linked

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.

[Becky666]

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?

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.

[The Wasp]

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".

[o_e_l_e_o]

It is not only about Bitcoin and Bitcoin Cash.

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.

If he could, he would probably claim trademark on "Bitcoin" name for his scam.

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."

[The-None-Above-All]

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.

It is not only about Bitcoin and Bitcoin Cash.

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.

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...

[o_e_l_e_o]

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.

[stompix]

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.

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.

[pooya87]

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
right there in its code copied from bitcoin core, whenever you create a new tx in bcashsv network!

[akirasendo17]

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.

[bitcoinermatt]

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.