The word “Bitcoin” holds many meanings to those of us who believe in it, but primarily, Bitcoin is an ethos of fairness. Satoshi Nakamoto invented the first form of money protected from government debasement, needless intermediary fees, and custodians (i.e., banks) that take control away from their customers. Bitcoin’s ethos of fairness is implemented through its protocols, which decentralize control so that the community of users can preserve the value of its chosen form of money.
While Satoshi’s invention took a quantum leap forward in ensuring a fair monetary policy systemwide, it came at the cost of fairness for the individual. Without intermediaries, there was no way to enforce the law between Bitcoin users. When criminals hacked or defrauded Bitcoin users, there was no authority to make it right.
One result was that criminals flocked to the blockchain and victimized users to the tune of tens of billions of dollars every year. This scared away would-be adopters and deprived Bitcoin of mass adoption. Ironically, the absence of legal authority also undermined one of Bitcoin’s primary values as users needed to entrust their assets to intermediaries to obtain protection rather than enjoying the freedom of custodying their own assets.
Jurat’s new Bitcoin branch, JTC, builds upon Satoshi’s ethos by preserving Bitcoin’s monetary protections while adding a dimension of fairness between the users. JTC accomplishes this by augmenting the Bitcoin core software with a new protocol that allows the network to communicate with official courts. The result is that blockchain users can enforce their property rights if they are victimized by a hack or fraud or lose their private keys. JTC branched directly from the BTC ledger, giving birth to the $JTC coin.
To put the $JTC coin in context, reviewing Bitcoin’s legacy of branching to create new coins is important.
Following the Bitcoin whitepaper, Satoshi introduced the first version of the Bitcoin code. Over time, the code was modified to produce additional coins as groups within the Bitcoin community sought to address concerns that Satoshi had left for future development. To name a few: $BCH is forked to speed transactions by increasing block sizes, $LTC is forked to reduce the control exercised by dominant mining enterprises, and the current $BTC coin includes the taproot upgrade fork to improve block handling.
These and other forks have created substantial value for their users.
Bitcoin Cash
Ticker: $BCH
Date of Fork: August 2017
Current Price: $244
Market Capitalisation: $4.7 billion
Bitcoin Cash ($BCH) was created in 2017 due to a standoff in the BTC community over block sizes, with the BCH community seeking to expand the block size to 8 MB.
The project is run by a team of developer volunteers who are focused on:
- P2P Payments: Bitcoin Cash can be used to send and receive payments between individuals without a third-party intermediary, just like BTC.
- Store of Value: Similarly to BTC, gold, and other commodities, some people consider BCH to be a store of value.
- Merchant payments: Bitcoin Cash is accepted by some merchants.
Bitcoin Cash has very similar use cases and fundamentals to BTC. The most significant difference is that its larger block size can make it a faster means of finalizing payments.
$BCH price action has been highly positive in the past 12 months. Since the FTX-induced crash late last year, it has rallied by over 100%, pushing its price to $244 from around $100 last December. Its market capitalization is around $4.8 billion, putting it among the top 20 cryptos by this metric.
Bitcoin Cash has rallied hard in the past year, gaining over 100%. Source: Coingecko
Bitcoin SV
Ticker: $BSV
Date of Fork: November 15, 2018
Current Price: $48
Market Capitalisation: $955 million
Bitcoin SV ($BSV) was created through a hard fork of Bitcoin Cash on November 15th, 2018. The split emerged due to an internal dispute among $BCH community members and developers about block size and protocol changes.
Proponents of BSV, led by Craig Wright, claimed to be the one true Bitcoin, with Wright filing lawsuits and dubiously claiming to be Satoshi Nakamoto. In the resulting fork, BSV encoded a massive increase in the block size from 8 MB to 2 GB. The expansion aimed to scale the network’s capacity to handle large transaction volumes.
The $BSV hard fork was used to develop the following use cases for BSV:
- Restoration of Original Opcodes: BSV reinstated specific opcodes, or instructions, that were removed from Bitcoin during the BCH fork.
- Focus on Data and Micropayments: BSV proponents emphasized the potential of Bitcoin SV for data storage and micropayments using larger block sizes and smart contracts.
- Smart Contracts: BSV attempts to extend the scripting language adopted by Satoshi in the first version of the Bitcoin software with support for smart contracts.
The $BSV project, like all hard forks, drew praise from some community members and frustrated Bitcoin maximalists. Regardless of which side of the debate you stand on, the financial success of $BSV is hard to deny. It has held its place in the top 100 cryptocurrencies by market cap even in the depths of the bear market, and in the past month, its price has rallied by over 50% from $30 to nearly $50.
$BSV has rallied by around 50% in the past month, and its market capitalization is closing in on $1 billion. Source: Coingecko
Litecoin
Ticker: $LTC
Date of Fork: October 13, 2011
Current Price: $70
Market Capitalisation: $5.2 billion
Litecoin ($LTC) emerged as a fork of Bitcoin in October 2011, aiming to address the perceived limitations of the original cryptocurrency. The primary difference between Litecoin and Bitcoin lies in the algorithm used for mining, with Litecoin employing the Scrypt algorithm instead of Bitcoin’s SHA-256. This change was intended to improve accessibility and reduce the centralization of mining power.
Litecoin quickly gained traction among cryptocurrency enthusiasts, becoming one of the first altcoins to achieve widespread adoption. Its faster processing times and lower fees made it an attractive alternative to Bitcoin for everyday transactions.
The $LTC supply is limited to 84 million, and its supply growth is limited through a halving system that sees block mining rewards slashed in half every 840,000 blocks, approximately every four years. The first halving occurred in 2012, and the most recent halving took place in August 2023.
Many traders expected $LTC to rally in 2023 following the halving event, but sentiment has been mixed. Even though $LTC has recovered from its 2022 bear market low of around $50, it’s still trading well below the $100 target that many analysts had expected. Nonetheless, with a market capitalization of over $5 billion, Litecoin is undoubtedly one of the most successful Bitcoin forks.
Litecoin was designed with the following features in mind:
- Transaction Speed: Litecoin’s Scrypt algorithm enables faster block confirmation times and quicker transaction processing.
- Lower Fees: Litecoin transactions typically incur lower fees than Bitcoin, making it a more cost-effective option for small payments.
- Widespread Adoption: Litecoin has been accepted by a growing number of merchants and payment platforms, enhancing its usability in everyday transactions.
$LTC has had a volatile year, trading between $65 and $110. Source: Coingecko
The JTC Branch: On-Chain Legal Recourse Meets Satoshi’s Vision
The previous forks have created multi-billion dollar market caps by extending the native capabilities that Satoshi wrote into the Bitcoin code. Still, from a holistic perspective, they have done little to improve upon the fundamental value proposition Satoshi created: they use his invention to decentralize the monetary system but do nothing to improve fairness for the individual users. The community fractured while fighting over relatively minor details of storage and speed without addressing the elephant in the room of users’ legal rights.
The Jurat JTC branch is the first within the Bitcoin community to tackle the problem. The branch and the $JTC coin were born out of a shared goal among developers and attorneys to incorporate fairness from the justice system into the original vision set out by Satoshi.
To that end, JTC adopted the complete BTC ledger and was forked directly from the Bitcoin core (unlike BSV and many others). The fork became effective as Block Height 717808 on January 8, 2022. As a result, JTC remains decentralized, private, and immutable while incorporating new legal recourse processes. Further, all BTC users as of that block own $JTC one-to-one with their $BTC and can access each network for its best use cases.
Because JTC incorporates the same protocols as BTC, it has the same limited supply of just 21 million and follows the same system of halvings approximately every four years. So, the scarcity and tokenomics for $JTC and $BTC are the same.
The $JTC token has split from Bitcoin to create a legally compliant blockchain solution.
$JTC Use Cases and Value Propositions
While following the same protocols as BTC, the augmentation of court connectivity allows JTC to fulfill new use cases best served when legal rights can be readily enforced.
$JTC’s Unique Use Cases
By incorporating a decentralized bridge to state and federal courts, JTC opens a host of use cases unavailable or less valuable on BTC or other blockchains.
$JTC and On-Chain Legal Recourse
The $JTC coin offers a unique ability needed for commercial transactions: legal recourse. For example, companies are used to doing business against the backdrop of contract law and the Uniform Commercial Code (UCC). All of these business standards depend upon the availability of legal recourse. Commercial parties cannot rely on their agreements without legal recourse and, therefore, cannot transact with one another.
For example, a buyer is entitled to a refund if the seller gives him a defective product. If a court cannot enforce the legal right to a refund when parties pay in cryptocurrency, the commercial buyer will refuse to adopt cryptocurrency for making payment.
Likewise, major commercial interests, such as banks and publicly traded corporations, are often custodians of other people’s money. They cannot afford to take risks that would cause an irretrievable loss in the event of fraud, mistake, or even forgetting a private key. Most cryptocurrencies can never be recovered in those circumstances, but with $JTC, a court can effectively order the cryptocurrency to be recovered.
Even when it comes to one’s own money, many consumers and businesses still refuse to put it at risk of theft and fraud. That is one of the reasons why cryptocurrency has not replaced cash and credit cards in our daily lives. With $JTC, however, the blockchain connects federal and state courts, allowing users to sue hackers and scammers and recover their assets.
$JTC and JTC Ordinals
The JTC Ordinal is a new type of digital asset that offers crypto fraud prevention features and the capacity to incorporate legal documents directly into a token. For example, the copyright, commercial license, and royalty agreements for NFT art can be inscribed into the ordinal’s metadata during the minting process, giving all parties clarity on their rights in the NFT.
Likewise, in the event of a dispute, the owner can use the court bridge to enforce their rights in the token. This means that a court can freeze the token until the required royalties are paid, and a collector can recover their NFT if it is stolen or lost through fraud.
The $JTC coin is used to mint JTC ordinals and as gas to trade them between users.
$JTC for Legal3 Attorneys and Permissioned Miners
Attorneys interested in Legal3 applications for blockchain can utilize $JTC in unique ways. Firstly, $JTC gives them access to an ecosystem with on-chain legal tools so that they can use blockchain to create products and services for their clients. Secondly, licensed attorneys and law firms are welcome to complete the permissioned mining information request to apply to become miners who earn $JTC by maintaining the blockchain.
Final Thoughts on Bitcoin Forks and Jurat’s Future
The success of forks as a way to extend Bitcoin’s use cases can be seen in the activity of their communities and the valuation of their coins. The $BCH, $BSV, and $LTC branches have enjoyed some of the biggest market capitalizations in crypto since forking.
The JTC branch offers a new dimension of Bitcoin functionality – achieving fairness between users through on-chain legal recourse. This is a needed additional function for Satoshi’s vision to achieve mainstream use. By forking from the Bitcoin core and adopting the BTC ledger, $JTC benefits from the same guaranteed scarcity as $BTC while also ensuring the privacy of the transactions and immutability of the ledger.
By extending BTC’s capabilities and mirroring BTC holdings, JTC can reinforce the Bitcoin ethos and open up Satoshi’s inventions for the next leg of mass adoption.
