Rivals to Bitcoin mushroom in battle for dominance in cryptocurrency arena

It’s getting tougher and tougher to keep track of all the different versions of bitcoin.

New iterations of the cryptocurrency are multiplying as disagreements over bitcoin’s design persist and opportunities for making a quick buck prove hard to pass up.

The biggest offshoot, called bitcoin cash, appeared in August after it split from the bitcoin blockchain in a so-called hard fork. That spin off, currently valued at almost US$18 billion, was followed by a less successful fork to create bitcoin gold in October, while major spin off that was planned for this week, stemming from an upgrade of the bitcoin technology called SegWit2x, was suspended. Now, several other splits are being planned.

There’s bitcoin diamond, bitcoin silver, bitcoin unlimited and super bitcoin – the latest proposal to emerge. But that’s not all, there’s also bitcoin platinum and bitcoin uranium, whose descriptions in Reddit posts looks suspiciously similar – and the uranium version carries the unfortunate ticker of BUM.

The proliferation of bitcoin break-up plans highlights the double-edged sword of the cryptocurrency’s decentralised design; it allows for experimentation where ultimately the market will pick each coin’s value and use, but it can also get confusing and messy for users.