With the latest Bitcoin Private (BTCP) scandal, is it safe to say that all bitcoin forks are scams?

• 2 million pre-extracted Bitcoin private tokens

The cryptographic data provider Coinmetrics published a report entitled "Do not trust, verify: a case study of private Bitcoin" that revealed some overwhelming information about this popular fusion of Bitcoin and ZClassic. Among other things, the report found that 2.04 million BTCP currencies were readily pre-mined before miners were given the chance to start extracting the currency.

Bitcoin Private was originally conceived as a currency that will take all the best features of Bitcoin and ZClassic (in turn a fork of Zcash), and among other things inherited the total offer of 21 million units from Bitcoin. However, an additional 2.04 million units were minted during the importation of the UTXO Bitcoin and sent to the protected BTCP pool "in a move that resulted in the BTCP supply limit being 23.04 millions. Shielded pools contain coins stored in shielded addresses, using Zk-SNARKS, a privacy technology that makes transactions anonymous.

Coinmetrics goes into more detail about how this premier happened in the article mentioned here published. To sum up, they explain that 102 "special blocks" were produced by the private Bitcoin network which contained 400 extra outputs containing 50 bitcoins each. Multiplying these numbers we can conclude that they have been pre-produced 2.040.000 BTCP extra.

This newly discovered information directly contradicts the information provided in the BTCP whitepaper and in the BitcoinTalk announcement thread, both of which state that the total offer will be 21 million and that the currency will have no pre-mine. About 300k BTCP has been withdrawn from the protected pool, which means that there are still 1.74 million coins sitting inside it. The BTCP team has not issued any official communication on this issue at the time of writing.

Is it safe to call the vast majority of pure bitcoin fork scam projects?

Apart from Bitcoin Cash, which is more or less a legitimate project with malicious intentions expressed through the attempt to hijack the bitcoin brand, there is a high probability that all other projects born through the bitcoin blockcoin fork are scams. Here is a list of all the forks and let me know what can be considered a legit project?

• Bitcoin Cash: Forked at Block 478558, August 1, 2017, for 1 BTC you receive 1 BCH
• Bytether: Cross fork from Bitcoin to Ethereum blockchain to block 478558, August 1, 2017. For every 1 BTC receive 1 BTH ERC-20 token.
• Bitcoin Clashic: Forked at Block 478558, August 1, 2017. For every 1 BTC receive 1 BCHC / BCL
• Bitcoin Gold: Forked at Block 491407, 24 October 2017, for 1 BTC you receive 1 BTG
• Bitcoin Diamond: Forked at Block 495866, November 24th 2017, for every 1 BTC you get 10 BCDs
• UnitedBitcoin: Forked at Block 498777, 12 December 2017, For every 1 BTC you receive 1 UB
• Bitcoin Hot: Forked at Block 498848, 12 December 2017, for every 1 BTC you get 100 BTH
• Super Bitcoin: Forked at Block 498888, 12 December 2017, For every 1 BTC you get 1 SBTC
• BitcoinX: Forked at Block 498888, 12 December 2017, For every 1 BTC you get 10,000 BCX
• Oil Bitcoin: Forked at Block 498888, 12 December 2017, For every 1 BTC you get 1 OBTC
• Bitcoin World: Forked at Block 499777, December 17, 2017, for every 1 BTC you get 10000 BTW
• Lightning Bitcoin: Forked at Block 499999, 19 December 2017, For every 1 BTC you get 1 LBTC
• Bitcoin Stake: Forked at Block 4999999, 19 December 2017, For every 1 BTC, get 100 BTCS
• BitEthereum: Forking on 21 December 2017, for every 1 BTC you receive 3.940616 BITE
• Bitcoin Top: Forked at Block 501118, 26 December 2017, for every 1 BTC you receive 1 BTT
• Bitcoin God: Forked at Block 501225, forked on 27th December 2017. For every 1 BTC receive 1 GOD
• Bitcoin FILE: bifurcated to Block 501225, bifurcated on 27 December 2017. For every 1 BTC receive 1000 BIFI
• Bitcoin SegWit2X X11 Not to be confused with a previous SegWit2X fork with the same name. Forked at Block 501451, 28 December 2017. For every 1 BTC you get 1 B2X
• Bitcoin Uranium: Forking on December 31st 2017, for every 1 BTC you receive 1 BUM.
• Bitcoin Pizza: Forking at Block 501888, 1st January 2018, For every 1 BTC you get 1 BPA
• Bitcoin All: Forking on January 1, 2018, for every 1 BTC you receive 1 BTA. Reported on steemit post.
• Bitcoin Cash Plus: Forking at Block 501407, Expected on 2 January 2018, For every 1 BTC receive 1 BCP
• Bitcoin Smart: Forking at Block 505050, January 21, 2018, For every 1 BTC you get 1 BCS
• Bitcoin Interest: Forking at Block 505083, January 22, 2018, For every 1 BTC you get 1 BCI
• Quantum Bitcoin: Forking on 28th January 2018, For every 1 BTC you get 1 QBTC
• Bitcoin LITE: Forking on January 30, 2018, for every 1 BTC you receive 1 BTCL
• Bitcoin Hours: Forking on 31st January 2018, For every 1 BTC you get 1 BCO
• Bitcoin Private: Forking in January 2018, for every 1 BTC you receive 1 BTCP (even if you have 1 ZCL you get 1 BTCP)
• Bitcoin ATOM: Forking at Block 505888 on January 24th 2018, For every 1 BTC you receive 1 BCA
• Bitcoin BitVote (BTV): Forking at Block 505050, January 21, 2018, For every 1 BTC you get 1 BTV
• Bitcoin BiZero (BZX): Forking in January 2019, for every 1 BTC you get 1 BZX

Bytecoin has made the secret premier before

According to the main developer of Monero, Riccardo Spagni:

"The reality is that 82% of the coins (Bytecoin) had already been extracted before its "public" release. Even if the pre-eminent coins have not been made so damagingly, it still means 82% of the coins in the hands of unknown and invisible people. Basically centralizes a decentralized currency."

82% is a huge number of coins to reward and offers developers and stakeholders the opportunity to influence the price of BCN exclusively with their holdings. Furthermore, this opens up the possibility of a "pump and dump", which means that the pre-eminent Bytecoin can be downloaded to the market which, in turn, would cause a significant drop in price.

"Even if we take note of the fact that Monero is clearly leading the race for innovation, I consider it dangerous to touch a currency in which the 82% of it is held by unknown actors who have not been publicly observed during the period in which they supposedly took out the coin. Having a dark story does not constitute a good precedent. "Spagni also says.