Bitcoin Forum

A hard fork will happen sooner or later so let's prepare our trading strategies for it.

What would be the impact of HF on the price?

How probable is the BU hard fork?

As to the first question - I think the impact will be huge - much bigger than the impact was at the ETH/ETC split, because ETH was much more experimental at the point of the split so people were prepared for weird stuff going on. But also because ETH had the means to stop transaction replay from one fork to the other - and that can really bring much chaos into the network. It works this way - let's say you have some old BTC which after the fork becomes a pair BTC+BTCBU,   you pay for something with BTCBU - and then the receiver of your funds replays your payment on the BTC network to get your BTC as well. As far as I know ETH because of the rich programming environment had ways to stop this - but BTC does not.

In the case of ETH/ETC split there was such a strong consensus that there was practically no battle about who gets the name Ethereum - but if for example the Chinese miners make a BU fork - than this will not be so simple. The longer the battle the more price impact.

The 11/12 March 2013 HF http://bitcoincharts.com/charts/chart.png?width=940&m=bitstampUSD&SubmitButton=Draw&r=60&i=&c=1&s=2013-03-10&e=2013-03-15&Prev=&Next=&t=S&b=&a1=&m1=10&a2=&m2=25&x=0&i1=&i2=&i3=&i4=&v=1&cv=0&ps=0&l=0&p=0&
It was very quick to resolve - one branch was just abandoned - so the impact was very short lived.

As to how probable is the immediate danger of a BU fork - I have no idea.

Update: https://www.cryptocoinsnews.com/antpool-founder-will-switch-entire-pool-bitcoin-unlimited/

hard forks are inevitable in all projects. codes update and we move forward.

and just FYI a hard for has already happened in bitcoin at least once before.


people will spread FUD about "hard fork" and there may be some dumps to manipulate the weak hands into selling their coins cheap to the whales, nothing new!

only time will tell. they have gotten one big mining pool but there is still a very long way to go!

ethereum didn't fork it split.

after DAO crap, the developer come to a consensus with his whale friends (less than 5% of those who are involved with ethereum) and since they have lost money they decided to cut their losses by doing a roll back and since the other 95% weren't even involved in this, obviously after the "roll back fork" a very large percentage remained on the old chain and called themselves classic.

it had nothing to do with either forking nor ETH being experimental!


the way I see it is that there is no danger of a BU fork. the danger is in forking without consensus.
if miners don't want BU, and if nodes don't want BU then the fork is dangerous and from what I have read, nobody wants that.

This is why I was 100% positive for a ETF aproval.
I knew that if ETF gets declined we will go for a HARD FORK.
And we all know that Hard Fork means that BTC value will drop below $800, even $200.

To be honest the miners would be crazy to try it out - the'd lose so much. But watching how the debates escalate does not bring much confidence in the maturity of all participants.

several day latter proposal ETF to SEC rejected not aprove
but this thread discussion about hard fork not ETF

op not write about ETF

Can i call if this is a FUD? But i think too early to make a speculationa about HF, although there is a definite answer about the winner the block voting is bitcoin unlimited.

When bitcoin unlimited 'wins' inspite of Segwit, there wont be a fork? 

I agree it seems we will see BU happening. at the moment they have 33.9% hashrate. BU hashrate was around 200/1000 blocks  but it has picked up in the last 4 days to be around 319/1000 blocks.   when BU gets close to 45 % hashrate we will see how the market reacts.. and if they go over 51% well then it is better we all hold tight to our pants because it will be very very scarey indeed.

All BU needs is that some of the 8mb and segwit miners to jump on BU or direct 100% of their miners towards it and boom the ride starts

And also like some one pointed out, it is not sure we might see two chains. ETH/ETC chains forked because of the rollback to create new chain in order to stop the hacker cashing out his tokens

I am already preparing for a fork. Time to build some fiat money to buy the dip. I dont sell my cold stash.

Current code can't fight with the new altcoin technologies and there should be a major update. Being the first and having the best name those are all good but if the network keeps being busy like this, people will use another crypto currency which fulfills their needs. Not because people don't like bitcoin but because they simply have no other choice.

I don't know if  Segwit or BU is a better choice but one of them should win this battle as quickly as possible. I see that BU will enable lower transaction fees, so my vote is with that one.

So what is a fork and what is a split? In eth we now have two incompatible branches in the blockchain - isn't that a fork?



Yeah - consensus is the greatest factor - this is illustrated by the  11/12 March 2013 HF - quick crash on uncertainty and quick recovery when it was obvious that everyone is on the same branch. If we have a fork without consensus the resulting chaos will repel investors.

I don't think it is all about miners. Developers have also something to say and who will get the name BTC (and this will be central in this battle) will be decided by the exchanges.

There is about a 100% chance that if Bitcoin is hard-forked, that we will have 2 Bitcoins actively trading afterwards.
I think it will hurt everyone involved in the short term, but in the longer term a Bitcoin Unlimited or with Segwit would be the more viable project.

If the Chinese miner want to keep mining Bitcoin classic instead of Bitcoin Unlimited, that is for them to decide. I don't really see value to mining farms, they are more like leaches who are starting to want ever more blood.

we need to go ahead scale bitcoin anyway if they cannot decide, a fork is the only thing to do, the time for speaking ended long time ago, i'm not happy with the current amount of fee to pay for a transaction, it's too expensive, either BU or segwit is okish as long as they solve this thing quickly, i think the fork will not cause any major dump is is just fud to make people dump

Miners will follow the user cases for the money. Exchanges, wallet providers etc favors Segwit. It doesn't matter if BU got enough hashpower for a HF, they will go down after 10min.

A HF after Segwit update will be much smoother than doing it in this current condition.

Why you don't sell your cold stash? If a HF happens, it's better to sell ALL and rebuy later at MUCH lower prices. Why keep a cold stash of for example 1000$ that will worth 100$ after a HF.

I am not 100% sure IF and WHEN the hardfork occurs and what the effects will be. Maybe there wont be a hardfork and then i sold my stash for nothing. When i am sure it will be at the same time that you guys know if and the price has alreay dropped by then. The best tactic right now is keeping your cheap bitcoin (below 800 EUR) and watch how everything plays out.

There's a humongous difference between agitating and flashing hashing and actually going through with it. If they were on that particular precipice I'm not totally sure they'd go through with it as the divisiveness would be at a fever pitch.

Here's an alternate theory, it's a fine reason for an outrageous alt pump. Cheaper, safer and more money to be made if you're behind a false narrative driving people to 'diversify'.

If I understood correctly, it will be like this:

If you hold your bitcoins in an appropriate bitcoin wallet, you will be able to own BUcoins (bitcoin unlimited coins) as the same amount of your BCcoins. (bitcoin core coins)

In other worlds, BUcoins will be created out of nothing and you will be able sell them for BCcoins and BCcoins for $$$.

That sounds like a huuuge dump fest to my ears.  8) People will dump that shit like there is no tomorrow.

Dumping bitcoin core coins you mean ? , if i understand you right.
But core is 80% of the total mined coins right?
Correct my if i am wrong, i am not sure.
Just keep your BTC in a cold wallet like Ledger and you will be fine i think.
Is there a real chance that a fork will happen? I doubt it.

I explained it as clear as i can. But i ll try again.  :P

Lets say you have 100bitcoins in your electrum wallet. When BU makes a hard fork, you will be able to claim another 100 bitcoins in your Bitcoin Unlimited wallet. Those bitcoins in your BU wallet will have a value in your regular bitcoins.

They will have the same value(1:1) at the beginning but in time, people will dump one of them to get the other. I mean, think about litecoin has a rate with bitcoins. After the HF, there will be 2 bitcoins, and they will have a rate between them also.

I expect the price to go %50  below of what it is now.(double the bitcoin number, same USD available = bitcoin loses half of its value in USD. simple math.)

Check Ethereum and Ethereum Classic for more information.

which wallet u suggest? blockchain, trezor, electrum?

Offcourse it will cause major dump, we will just not know if it will be core or BU that will be dumped or maybe they will co exist

Ok thanks !
I am quite noob with all those technical issue's
But how do we know if the new bitcoin is going to be BU or Segwit?
Maybe some newbies buy the wrong one like etc inspite of eth and end up with a worhtless low volume trashcoin.

We can't know that. That's why you better stay in FIAT rather than getting caught in this shitstorm.

BU has more features but who knows what people will do. Since the Core team is the original team, people may still trust the original team even the code is outdated.

Or, people may say fuck the high fees, fuck the slow transactions and may dump core coins and can go with the BU coins.

What's your advice? Sell all now and buy later? What if no hard fork happens, and we miss the train and remain in fiat?

There is no hard fork without consensus, HF means changing the protocols, changing the set rules of source code. we just need a 250KB temp block size increase not creating unlimited blocks over night. we could use a decentralized super computer like Golem as a central authority to validate large blocks and compressing them to 1MB then nodes and miners include, time stamp and validate them and successfully add them to the block chain but I think that would require some serious coding skills and a big fat hard fork.

Or we could use a decentralized SC as a trusted party to sync our wallets without the need to download the entire block chain.

Anyways if HF happens it will happen because of a consensus voting and that is not a bad thing since the majority wants nothing other than a healthy network to thrive so we should continue to support the majority(joining them and become majority ourselves)

I don't know when will this hard fork thing take place but yeah i advise you to get out before it happens. This advice is only about that HF thing. It has nothing to do with bitcoin's general situation. You may sell now and you may see it's doubled its value when you woke up. It can happen.

But HF will certainly cause a lose of value. That's all i'm sayin.

Electrum is not the best option if a hard fork happens because you have to be careful the remote node you connect to is supporting the chain you want to transact on. Trezor is a better choice IMO. You own your private keys securely offline. When the last hard fork scare happened Trezor devs said they would run two instances of the online Trezor wallet so you could choose which chain to sell on. Running your own Bitcoin Core node is also a good choice if a hard fork appears close.

My speculation is that the worst thing for bitcoin right now is deadlock on the scaling debate. Anything that moves us closer to a resolution, even if it means HF, will be perceived by the market as bullish.

Even if we end up with a big messy* HF, it will not necessarily cause a big crash. Everyone knows that sooner or later we'll end up with ONE WINNER and ONE MORE ALT. So friggin' what????

* messy as in: BU gets 65% hashrate, BU triggers a HF, market decides that BU is worth less than Core, miners migrate to Core and soon CoreCoin hashrate > BUcoin hashrate, Core's chain gets longer than BU chain and the instant that happens, BAM!!!!! all the BU miners switch from BUcoin back to CoreCoin. That would be fuckin' messy.

There will be another problem.

It is about the exchanges.

Since you need to own your bitcoins in your own bitcoin wallet and not in an exchange in order to benefit from the hardfork; many people will be withdrawing their coins from the exchanges.

That may cause some serious  liquidity problems with the exchanges... unless they credit your accounts with BU coins automatically.

that's a huge issue, especially if they don't come to a common agreement about classification.

aside from that exchanges are kind of the arbiter of any hard fork.

of course they'll allow btu as there'll be incredible amounts of money to be made. but there'll be so many vested interests on either side with deep pockets that it might take weeks or more to have any idea how well either fork is actually doing.

Def wanna have your coins off the exchanges with keys in your sole possession if/when a fork happens.

As soon as the fork happens, if you want you can put your coins back onto the exchange. So liquidity problems will not be long-lived.

Just one more reason we need decentralized exchanges.

I am not sure, even if you have your bitcoins on exchanges i am sur eyou will have same amount in BU if they list it. So if you have 5 BTC at lest say polo then you will have 5 BU after the fork in case there will be seperate chain

having a wallet at exchanges is not much diffrent then having your own wallet. but correct me if i am wrong. ..i remember this happened with my ETH/ETC on polo

it's a terrible idea however you wanna look at it. you're leaving yourself at their mercy and their vulnerabilities.

the exchange may decide it wants nothing to do with the fork in which case you don't get free coins. even if they do love it the exchange may be gamed somehow. nobody knows how it's gonna play out.

the only sensible option is to retain control yourself.

true ,  as always is better to keep the bitcoins outside exchangers. I was just trying to make a point about a wallet is a wallet even if it is at a exchangers  and will count towards the new chain.

it is all about hashrate and nodes. in short about how many will adopt the new change. if majority do, the fork will happen smoothly (like the last time bitcoin hard forked) and there will be no "other chain".

keeping on exchange or in your cold storage won't make a difference in this case.

Looks like after the latest BU bug this subject becomes less urgent.

a fork is just an upgrade, a bit similar to what you do when upgrading your browser for example, usually in software development a hardfork is used when the changes are not backward compatible and softfork is when they are. although there is not a single unified definition of hard and soft fork, this is the closest.

in there, if the fork is done with consensus meaning if the majority of the network accept the change (fork) it will happen smoothly and the minority will either switch or be left as an orphan blockchain.

a split (like what happened with ethereum) only happens when the fork happens without consensus. this means there is no minority/majority and there is enough power behind each side to run a perfectly good blockchain.

These two statements are incompatible - if a split is a fork with additional conditions then is eth did a split it also did a fork. I guess you meant 'ethereum didn't just fork - it did a full split'.

"Coinbase, Bitfinex Would List Bitcoin Unlimited As “Altcoin” After Soft Fork: Mow" https://cointelegraph.com/news/coinbase-bitfinex-would-list-bitcoin-unlimited-as-altcoin-after-soft-fork-mow

That is how BU lost the name battle.

Do exchanges pay out interest on proof of stake coins? If not, there is nothing to make them give you both BTU and BTC in case there is a hard fork.
It is best to withdraw your bitcoins before there is a hard fork. Trouble is, we might not know when exactly the fork will take place.

I should also add a question - what would be a good hedge for the fork. I am inclined to think that LTC should be one - all other alts has already had their rallies, LTC has been long in a bear mode, it is not the most innovative. But exactly because of the lack of innovation it is the closest alternative for BTC - so it should be a good hedge for forks in BTC.

Simple strategy:

Pretty much any altcoin that has an active team / roadmap and is not peaking right now.

Ratio your investments based on market cap.

Google trends for bitcoin hard fork are up: trends.google.pl/trends/explore?q=bitcoin%20hard%20fork

Thanks for the link, good job! This let us see that the decline is a result of hardfork rumours what means that this decline will continue till the problem is solved. People fear a ETH / ETC scenario.

Good thread here by the way.

For my strategy, I intend to follow Roger Ver and make a "safer" investment in Dash or maybe XMR and LTC. Roger Ver is one of the Bitcoin pioneers and he knows what he is doing, especially when to comes to cryptocurrency investment. I will start doing this if the total miners' support for BU is at 50%.

I am a noob so please enlighten me about technicalities of how hard fork woks exactly.
In case of hard fork we will have 2 versions of bitcoin, just like Ethereum has classic version and standard version or there will be be only one updated version?
I always wondered why there are 2 Ethereums around and I don't want bitcoin to be divided like that as well.

Yes, we will have 2 coins. The original chain (BTC) and the hard forked altcoin (BTE or whatever they call it).

How will have exactly the same coins in both chains (not if they are kept at the exchanges)

So what you have to do is dump BTE before it becomes stagnant like ETC, this way you get more bitcoins for free.

But BUcoin is dead after the bug, it has no real support anymore so there will be no hard fork most likely unless Jihan Wu is on a suicide mission.

I predict the great Jihan Wu of Bitmain will change tack and declare support for Core and Segwit just like Brian Armstrong of Coinbase did. They will realize that off chain transactions is the superior solution compared to dynamic block sizes.

first of all there is a possibility of that happening and it can be prevented. like the last hard fork of bitcoin that you don't even know about.
it is bullshit to say bitcoin will split if it hardforks with 100% certainty.

second of all all this drama started as a continuation of the fight between two proposals for block size issue and we are very far away from anything remotely like this happening. only one pool switched their vote to BU and it is still ~30% in total!!!

also even in case of a split in order to "dump BTE" you need to find a place that is accepting "BTE" and if like you said it is considers shit and an altcoin nobody will be accepting it. "BTE" would be an altcoin fork that no exchange lists and you would be holding nothing.

and i hope you realize that Juahn Wu (that you guys like repeating his name) is just one pool with 17% of the total 100% and there is still lots of other miners and then also there are still lots of bitcoin users (nodes) and then merchants and services,...
and its a freaking pool, people can switch if they don't agree with its decisions.

Who gives a fuck about what they say?

When all the miners convert to BU and most of the users decide to use BU instead of the core, then let's see their opinions on the subject again.

If the community decides that BU is the new bitcoin, then there is nothing to be done about it.

I hate fucking exchanges, they are cancer.

That is wishful thinking - you hate exchanges so you believe they have no say.

Man i wait till all this hardfork BU storm is passed. 100 % fiat now. When we fork the price will decline with 50%, just look like Eth. A hardfork will cause a 2 year bear market.

Don't you try your luck with alts? ETH and DASH made some nice gains. I am trying LTC, everybody gave up on it - but we'll see.

This was the worst trading month for me ever. Lost 2k this month because of dumps. Anyway altcoins are also to much pumpd like dash and Eth. Litecoin has almost the same movement like BTC so litecoin will decrease when Bitcoin decreases. So dont buy Ltc. I think Creditbit is a good alternative while Bitcoin will continue to tumbling down. Believe me we wont go up untill scaling problem is solved.

LTC is the closest alternative to BTC - that's why it often moves together. But this time LTC is not in danger of a fork and has SegWit much closer than BTC - so it should not be dragged down. At the same time being the most closest substitute should make it attractive as a hedge. Potentially if there is a real BTC meltdown - then for merchants it would be the easiest to switch to LTC.

The other alts are already pumped up - so look dangerous, but ETH is tempting, it is not really an alternative - it is a new thing.

I already bought ETH at 10 EUR. But i sold it all at the same price because months of stagnating. But i think Creditbit can be really big, it is the fastest crypto and still very small and not pumped

I spent a lot of time looking at alts, and eventually chose XMR. Even if bitcoin does not hard fork, which is most likely, XMR has decent change of succeeding. It's the unique combination of qualities, many of which follow up on the original promises of the bitcoin project:

1. Fungible
2. Decentralized
3. Great Dev Team
4. Trailing Emissions
5. Adaptive Block Sizes
6. Not Instamined/Scammed
7. Unique Code Base
8. Everything is 100% Community Funded
9. Already in Use by Darknet Markets
10. Currently Undervalued (IMO)

Monero undervaluated LOL, nah it almost on his ATH  :).I try to buy creditbit but it is a new coin and hard to buy lol.

I think so, the drama if the bitcoin unlimited vs Core dev was hurting the bitcoin. Especially with a rumour about the upcoming hardfork and i think XMR is the best rather than bitcoin in all of the aspects.
But the popularity still hold by the bitocin itself. all of your list are true.

USD, gbp or whatever takes your fancy that isn't crypto. You'd be batty to think that Bitcoin pissing all over itself wouldn't have an effect on everything else too. If there is a contentious hard fork, and I don't believe there will be, I'd leave and not come back.

2. Highly arguable argument. There are some well known facts which can discredit monero developers very easily.
7. Monero developers used to copy&paste code from various repositories like Bytecoin & Boolberry without giving credits.
9. How this is a positive? This will be the reason which will ostracize monero in the long run and top its growth and adoption.
10. I disagree. Price is rather inflated IMO.

Or read this http://www.coindesk.com/bitcoin-exchanges-unveil-emergency-hard-fork-contingency-plan/

Why not follow Roger Ver and the other big blockers and hold everything in the new up and coming altcoin called BTU. It has a better scaling solution than BTC. Haha! :D

I believe many supporters of BTU will change course and go back supporting Core again, now that the exchanges declared BTU will be the altcoin.

It is a hard battle now as bitmain has to make a decision now on what their future is as it will be a great blow to their plans if BU is considered as an altcoin and if they loose control over the market it wont be that good for their plans,only time will tell and i am waiting to see how the next step will be ,because when antpool announced that they are going with BU they found the fatal bug in BU and now major exchanges are with the core and it is like a soap opera now. :D

they already deccided to stay with Core.



And that is only the purely mathematical side. You also have to factor in speculation, uncertainty, fud. People who dont know anything technical about bitcoin have to learn that there are now two suddenly. It will also have a major price impact. It will promote distrust in bitcoin. Markets hate uncertainty.


a central solution. awesome   :o


in the long run definitely. But short and mid term the price devaluation would be significant. The ETH guys had to wait for what, 8 months now for the price to reach the former levels again. With a low of less than 30 % of the price before the HF.


Polo too. I currently estimate a winning Bitcoin Core as more likely. However if BU would achieve to keep the major part of the hash power for a long time (say months) then sooner or later they would  be regarded as the winning chain and market participants had no other choice than to recognize them as the true Bitcoin, also the exchanges. I dont think its likely right now, but its within the realm of possibilities.