Bithereum: An Innovative Blockchain Merging the Visions of Bitcoin and Ethereum

What is Bithereum

Friends, imagine if there were a digital currency that combined the robust “digital gold” qualities of Bitcoin with the flexibility and innovation-friendly nature of Ethereum—wouldn’t that be amazing? Bithereum (BTH for short) was conceived to merge the strengths of these two blockchain giants—Bitcoin and Ethereum—into a brand new, more powerful digital currency.

It adopted a very special approach called a “Hard Fork” and a “Hard Spoon.” You can think of a “hard fork” as a new road branching off from the main Bitcoin highway, inheriting Bitcoin’s original features but making some fundamental changes. A “hard spoon,” on the other hand, is like “scooping” a spoonful of data from Ethereum—such as taking a snapshot of Ethereum users’ assets and then distributing BTH tokens to them on the new chain.

So, Bithereum’s initial goal was to be a peer-to-peer electronic cash system like Bitcoin, while also integrating Ethereum’s technical roadmap—especially its Proof-of-Stake (PoS) mechanism—to achieve faster processing speeds and lower transaction fees.

Project Vision and Value Proposition

Bithereum’s vision was ambitious: it aimed to address some of Bitcoin’s core issues at the time, such as community splits, limited scalability, and the energy consumption and centralization risks associated with Proof-of-Work (PoW) mining.

Its core value propositions can be summarized as:

• Fusion Innovation: Combining Bitcoin’s robustness with Ethereum’s flexibility.
• Enhanced Scalability: Introducing technologies like Lightning Network and Segregated Witness (SegWit) to make transactions faster and cheaper.
• Optimized Mining Mechanism: Planning to transition from the initial GPU-friendly Proof-of-Work (Equihash) to a more efficient and energy-saving Proof-of-Stake (PoS), reducing energy consumption and improving network security.
• Incentivizing Node Operation: Introducing a unique “Proof-of-Uptime” (PoU) mechanism to reward full node operators who provide stable service to the network—an innovative attempt at the time.

In short, Bithereum aimed to build a more democratic, efficient, and secure blockchain network, enabling more people to participate and benefit from blockchain technology.

Technical Features

Bithereum had several notable technical highlights:

Consensus Mechanism

In its early stages, Bithereum adopted a Proof-of-Work (PoW) mechanism based on the Equihash algorithm. You can think of PoW as miners competing to solve complex mathematical puzzles; whoever solves it first gets to add a new block and receive a reward. The Equihash algorithm is “memory-intensive,” meaning that ordinary home computers (especially those with high-performance GPUs) could participate in mining, rather than being dominated by expensive specialized ASIC miners. This achieved a certain degree of “democratization” in mining.

However, Bithereum’s long-term goal was to transition to Proof-of-Stake (PoS). In PoS, you don’t compete for block production by mining, but rather by the amount of tokens you hold and “stake” (lock up), which determines your right to validate transactions and produce blocks. The more you hold and the longer you stake, the higher your chances of being selected. Bithereum planned to draw on Ethereum’s Casper protocol for this transition, aiming for a faster, more energy-efficient, and more secure network that could effectively resist 51% attacks.

Scalability Solutions

To address blockchain network “congestion,” Bithereum planned to introduce two important scalability technologies:

• Lightning Network: This is an “off-chain” solution. Imagine you and a friend have many small transactions; instead of queuing at the bank (main chain) every time, you open a “mini-ledger” (payment channel) between you, settle all the small transactions quickly there, and only submit the final result to the bank (main chain). This greatly increases transaction speed and reduces fees.
• Segregated Witness (SegWit): This is an “on-chain” solution. By optimizing the data structure within blocks and separating signature information (witness data) from the transaction body, it allows each block to contain more transactions without increasing the block size limit, thus improving network throughput.

Node Incentive Mechanism: Proof-of-Uptime (PoU)

Bithereum also introduced a very unique concept—Proof-of-Uptime (PoU). In many blockchain networks, running a full node is crucial for network health and security, but there’s usually no direct economic reward. The PoU mechanism was designed to address this by rewarding full node operators who remain online and provide service to the network. In other words, as long as your node runs stably and contributes computing power or storage, you can earn BTH token rewards. This is different from traditional mining rewards and from “masternodes” that require large token stakes; it was intended to encourage more people to participate in building the network’s infrastructure.

Replay Protection

Since Bithereum was forked from Bitcoin, to prevent transactions on the old chain from being replayed on the new chain (and vice versa), it implemented comprehensive two-way Replay Protection to ensure users transact on the correct chain.

Tokenomics

Bithereum’s token symbol is BTH.

Token Distribution

BTH’s initial distribution was unique, with airdrops to both Bitcoin (BTC) and Ethereum (ETH) holders:

• Bitcoin holders: At the time of the fork, each BTC held entitled the holder to 1 BTH.
• Ethereum holders: The project took a snapshot of existing Ethereum account balances and airdropped BTH tokens to those ETH holders.

Premine

The project team reserved 1,600,000 BTH tokens, about 5% of the total supply.

Total Supply and Circulation

BTH’s available supply is about 30.9 million, with a maximum supply of 31 million. However, according to data platforms like CoinMarketCap and Coinranking, BTH’s circulating supply is currently 0, and there is no market cap data. This means the token currently has virtually no active trading or market value.

Token Utility

The main use of BTH tokens is as a reward for its unique “Proof-of-Uptime” (PoU) mechanism, incentivizing those who run full nodes and provide stable service to the network.

Team, Governance, and Funding

Core Members

According to public information, Bithereum’s core team members included:

• Sachit Singh: Founder, Head of Operations.
• Scott Wade: Founder, Head of Communications.
• Sanjay Kripalani: Partner, UAE Business Development.
• Dondrey Taylor: Core Developer.
• Samit Singh: Chief Strategist.

This information is mainly from the project’s early days (2018-2019). There is very limited public information about the team’s current activity, governance mechanisms, or project funding.

Roadmap

During 2018-2019, the Bithereum project released several important plans and milestones:

• 2018: The project proposed the idea of “hard forking” Bitcoin and “hard spooning” Ethereum to combine their strengths.
• August 2018: Detailed the technical roadmap for transitioning from Equihash Proof-of-Work to Proof-of-Stake (PoS), and planned to adopt scalability solutions like Lightning Network and SegWit.
• January 2019: BTH token reached an all-time high of $1.17.
• July 2019: Released version 2.0 of “Proof-of-Uptime” (PoU) and launched Bithereum Node Tools to encourage users to run nodes and earn rewards.

However, since 2019, public information about new technical progress, major milestones, or future plans for Bithereum has become very scarce. No clear, updated official roadmap could be found.

Common Risk Warnings

Friends, when learning about any blockchain project, we need to stay clear-headed and identify potential risks. For Bithereum, based on currently available information, please pay special attention to the following:

• Project Activity and Maintenance Risk: Most detailed information about Bithereum dates back to 2018-2019. Although there have been a handful of code updates on GitHub in the past year, overall activity is very low, which may indicate that core development and maintenance have stalled or greatly diminished. A project lacking ongoing development and maintenance faces significant risks in technical security, feature updates, and ecosystem growth.
• Information Asymmetry and Project Pivot Risk: Bithereum’s official website (bithereum.network) has now pivoted to a site focused on crypto trading information and automated trading platform connections, rather than the original blockchain project site. This may mean the original blockchain project has ceased operations, or the core team has shifted focus to other ventures. This lack of transparency makes it harder to assess the project’s current status.
• Economic Risk: According to CoinMarketCap and Coinranking, BTH’s current real-time price is $0, with 24-hour trading volume also at $0 and no circulating market cap. This indicates the token has virtually no market liquidity and its value may have dropped to zero. For any digital asset, lack of liquidity means you may not be able to sell or exchange it when needed.
• Technical and Security Risk: If the project is no longer actively maintained, any vulnerabilities in the code may go unpatched, posing potential security risks. In addition, if the number of network participants (nodes) drops sharply, the network’s decentralization and resistance to attacks will also decrease.
• Compliance and Operational Risk: As global crypto regulation evolves, projects lacking active operations and clear compliance strategies may face greater uncertainty.

Please remember, the above information is for reference only and does not constitute investment advice. Always conduct thorough independent research before participating in any cryptocurrency project.

Verification Checklist

To learn more about the Bithereum project, you can try checking the following resources, but note that their activity and timeliness may be low:

• Block Explorer: Try visiting `insight.bithereum.network` or `explorer.bithereum.network` to view on-chain activity. However, given the project’s current activity, these explorers may no longer provide real-time or comprehensive data.
• GitHub Activity: Visit Bithereum’s GitHub repositories (e.g., `github.com/BTHPOS`) to check code commits and development activity. At present, the core repo has only a handful of updates in the past year, with other repos updated even earlier.
• Official Website: `bithereum.network`. Note that the site now mainly provides crypto trading platform connection and information services, not the original blockchain project’s technical whitepaper or development updates.
• Social Media/Community: Try searching for the project’s early social media (such as Reddit `r/Bithereum`, Medium blog) for historical information, but these channels may no longer be active.

Project Summary

Bithereum’s original concept was highly innovative: it sought to combine Bitcoin’s robustness with Ethereum’s flexibility through “hard fork” and “hard spoon” methods, and introduced Proof-of-Stake (PoS), Lightning Network, Segregated Witness, and the unique Proof-of-Uptime (PoU) to address scalability, energy consumption, and node incentive challenges in the blockchain space.

However, based on currently available public information, Bithereum as an active blockchain project appears to have stalled since 2019. Its official website has pivoted to providing crypto trading services, and the original blockchain project’s technical updates, community activity, and token market performance (real-time price and trading volume both at zero) all strongly suggest the project may no longer be active or has been abandoned.

Therefore, although Bithereum proposed some interesting technical ideas in the past, it now appears to be no longer an active blockchain project. For anyone interested in Bithereum, it is strongly recommended to treat it as a historical case study rather than a promising investment target. Please remember, this is not investment advice; any decisions should be based on your own independent research and risk assessment.