We haven't previously seen this thread regarding Bithereum, and if we had we would have been answering the many questions people had about our project. Bithereum officially launched on January 5th: https://medium.com/bithereum-network/bithereum-news-updates-4e05e3ffa32a
To clarify, Bithereum is a hard-fork of Bitcoin, and we also hard-spooned Ethereum, meaning we took a snapshot of the Ethereum blockchain to reward ETH holders with BTH.
The reason we're rewarding ETH holders with BTH is due to the fact that our ultimate goal is to build a Casper-like PoS model atop a modified version of Bitcoin (hence combining the names), using various existing opcodes and creating new opcodes. There are many benefits that PoS has that we feel could benefit Bitcoin over it's current PoW model. Our PoS proof of concept can be found in one of our medium blogs here: https://medium.com/bithereum-network/bithereums-proof-of-stake-concept-b06899fa4950
Our biggest differentiator is that, unlike Bitcoin and Ethereum, we have a new concept called Proof-of-Uptime (PoU) in which anyone who runs a Bithereum full node will be rewarded in BTH.
With Bitcoin and Ethereum, there are a misalignment of incentives when it comes to full nodes. Though running a full node is absolutely crucial to the success of the network in the first place, there is no model in place to incentivize this, relying on people to be ideologically attached to a project rather than financially incentivized in the way that every miner is.
More information regarding Proof of Uptime and the full node rewards program can be found here: https://medium.com/bithereum-network/introducing-proof-of-uptime-7e91256aabf1 (this is only the first iteration of PoU and is likely to change in the future)
This is also different than coins who use masternodes because it is required to have a certain amount of their coin to be rewarded for running a masternode. For earning full node rewards with Bithereum, it is not required for you to own any BTH.
We also are not trying to compete with either Bitcoin or Ethereum, however provide a new alternative p2p currency that incentivizes all parties involved and is influenced by the two biggest coins. Ethereum was designed to be used as fuel for executing smart contracts and using dApps on its platform, it was not designed to be used as a p2p currency. Bitcoin as most people know has much progress to make in order to be the p2p currency it wishes to be, and most people are looking at it as a store of value now. Bithereum is meant to be an outlet for both Bitcoin and Ethereum, not direct competition.
If you would like more information about our project or have any other questions we're always happy to discuss and you can join our discord and speak to us directly: https://discord.gg/wbsnuGN
There are many additional resources on our website: https://bithereum.network and our official ANN is here: https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/ann-bithereum-bth-hard-spork-bitcoin-hard-fork-ethereum-hard-spoon-4738533