Bitcoin Forum

Why is Bitcoin the predominant one among different forks, such as Bitcoin Cash, Bitcoin Gold, Bitcoin SegWit2X?

Is it because Bitcoin is the most original one? Does it have to do with its price? Or does it have to do with its broad, generic name? Or because it's more widely adopted by many companies? In other words, is there some sort of complicated blockchain technology that will always make the Bitcoin most predominant one among different forks regardless of any circumstances? Is it theoretically possible for forks like Bitcoin Cash, Bitcoin Gold, Bitcoin SegWit2X to be more predominant than Bitcoin in the future? I don't know much about blockchain technology and I wonder if it's ever related to the fact that Bitcoin's the most predominant one.

Theoretically there is nothing preventing forks from becoming more common than Bitcoin.

It's just a matter of market share, merchant acceptance, amount of exchanges...

I think the main reason why people tend to prefer the original chain over any other fork is because the original chain has survived since 2009 and lived through so many crashes. The forked chains on the other hand are brand new and they're unproven to work properly and survive major crashes. Another big factor is the abbrevation. Whichever chain gets the 'BTC' abbrevation is in my opinion the dominant chain, everything else is an altcoin.

People underestimate the "brand value" of legacy Bitcoin. People will always herd to what is proven and accomplishes their needs.

It is very difficult to make people change their habits and, in the case of legacy bitcoin, it also has the best minds in the field working on the code, so there is a positive expectancy in terms of future features, not just security.

And when most forks are mired in controversial motives and led by sketchy characters, that further helps strengthen the original bitcoin.

If something better comes along that will become the new "bitcoin". Until then, the chain that's got the most approval is the original one (+BIPs) so that's what a bitcoin really is. These others are just people forking off of a good thing to try and piggyback on the name.

Because changing anything in life takes effort, including the blockchain you are using. Unless there are clear benefits, Bitcoin users will not leave Bitcoin. If they switched for every fork, there would be no purpose of Bitcoin. Users don't want to change their clients from the ones that are most secure,stable and most reviewed, so they stick to Bitcoin Core. Meanwhile Bitcoin Core developers do whatever is possible to avoid hardfork changes, they prefer softforks for stability,security and backward compatibility reasons. It is hard to change what is already established, this is natural way of preserving stability and security in a system, but with big enough benefits Bitcoin could fork, there is just no good reason for that now nor can we see one with certainty for the future.

Call it a first mover's advantage. Bitcoin was the first to use the blockchain technology since 2009, and the other coins that have come after it have used different, maybe even better technologies, but the ingrained idea is that bitcoin is the first to have come out of it. Plus, it has survived various attempted attacks, different developers and forks in the past, therefore, it has a time tested and proven track record. If you see many of the altcoins during the boom in 2014, most of them were abandoned by the developers and were used as mere pump and dump coins even by its users. All these reasons make btc the predominant force in the market today.

Bitcoin seems to be the most adopted cos it is the oldest among all crypto currency.

Its been around the longest so its the most trusted. It has the largest support of the miners and users. The other chains are up and coming. They may displace but the network effect is super powerful on a blockchain. Takes a lot of users switch to make it happen

The miners are incentivised to follow the most widely adopted chain to maximise their profit so there needs to be a very strong reason to move away from the the original Bitcoin supported by the Core team. The miners and scale of Bitcoin is what gives it security and its wide adoption in many areas just makes it safer and easier to stick with it. It may not always be that way but there would have to be a very compelling reason to switch.

Thats a good one. Bitcoin is a brand now. Speculation may drive it further than its real value. It may cost more than more effective networks.
Still i think demand is very high for Bitcoin. Its most stable thing out there, accepted everywhet has a long road ahead.

Simply put popularity, if there is a coin no one uses then no one is going to fork it because there is no interest on it, but if something is popular people are going to want to influence the direction of the project and when they can’t they fork, this is a dumb example but think of a very famous song and a song that almost no one knows, there are going to be very few covers and versions(forks) of that song, but if the song is popular you are going to find many versions and thousands of covers in youtube.

Ethereum was forked before Bitcoin so we can't actually say that BTC is the predominant one. Even if we consider BTC to be the predominant one among the forks, then it is probably because of the vast popularity that uses Bitcoin. Now since it is decentralized currency there are many groups of people who want BTC to work according to them and that is the main reason why BTC is forked from the chain. First the Segwit2x and then the Bitcoin cash, they are just groups of people who wanted to be separated from the chain and wanted BTC to work according to them.

Bitcoin forks been mostly majority so far. Like Bitcoin Cash only small number people used. If Bitcoin bad fork in future where split is in half, it loses dominance quicker.

In my opinion, reasons are:
1) higher price (and speculation)
2) network externalities

I think we will see many forks next months (about 1 every 2-3 months).
If Ethereum failed to kick out Bitcoin from its throne, I don't think that a fork will do.

      Bitcoin is the first among the cryptocurrency and because of its vast popularity many business groups or people, companies are attracted to bitcoin.It is due to the decentralized one the above groups want to work BTC to their own directions that is the main reason BTC is forked from the chain like the segwit2x, bitcoin cash and now the bitcoin gold etc.

One of advantage of bitcoin is the popularity has higher value than the others. Because of the higher value so many investor encourage to put their money on the line they feel much safer. So many forks but over the past year or so hard forks have gotten a bad reputation for political reasons by that i see bitcoin is the predominant one than the others.:)

There are many factors that are in play the most important is that the original chain has the most money riding on it so people prefer it simply because there are more profits to be made in there, but some other reason that come to mind is that the original chain traces back its heritage to satoshi and as we know satoshi is revered like a genius in this forum and in any forum related to crypto.

Bitcoin {BTC} will always be the original idea and the technology that started all other Crypto currencies. Bitcoin is also the most proven network since 2009, with a perfect security history. Some of the most talented developers in the industry has cut their Crypto currency teeth on Bitcoin. {Now they think they are better than Bitcoin and are supporting their own coins in competition of the original coin.}

Bitcoin also have the largest merchant network and adoption rate. It is early days for these Copycat coins. {Bitcoin's been there, Done that and is wearing the T-shirt for many years now} ^smile^

It is the community, and consequently the market, who decides which chain is "Bitcoin" and which is the most valuable. But the Segwit2x/btc1 supporters are arguing that the chain with the most hash rate is the real "Bitcoin".

But we will see on November. I believe Segwit2x will be Bitcoin's biggest ordeal.

Why do we need a new coin

This is not the first attempt to create a "new" bitcoin. Currently, the market capitalization of cryptocurrency, is $95 billion, "Watching his success, many people are thinking about creating a similar currency," says Michael Mashchenko, an analyst with the social network for investors eToro in Russia and the CIS.

In cryptosuite already discussed the possibility of such currencies as the Bitcoin XT Ultimate Bitcoin and Bitcoin Classic. While successful there was an experiment with the BCH. The creation of Bitcoin Gold, as claimed by the ideologues of the changes attempt to return the status of bitcoin "digital gold", which, in the opinion of the community, the bitcoin began to lose. Supporters of the hard forks of bitcoin even began to use such slogans as "Make Bitcoin decentralized again" or just "Make bitcoin great again", parodying the slogan of the President of the United States Donald trump during the election campaign of 2016.

The miners and scale of Bitcoin is what gives it security and its wide adoption in many areas just makes it safer and easier to stick with it. It may not always be that way but there would have to be a very compelling reason to switch. ;) :D :o

I believe that the fork where most people have an interest in will always be the main fork. I think it will be hard for a fork of bitcoin to ever 'reach a larger audience'.

Op I think you are missing many things together. Splitting is different from hardfork! Like what hard in August first was hardfork that activities sigwith1x and after that around 5 pm gmt the same day there was splitting between bitcoin core and bitcoin Cash. Sigwith2x is a hardfork but bitcoin gold is a splitting and this happens often in stock especially when there is a buying over and a company separated into two the share are splitting between the two. We should expect more of the hardfork in future as this will better the blockchain technology. The splitting in the long run is not good for the technology as together we stand and separation we fall.

Because it is the mother of all cryptocurrencies. I think this will not change all too quickly..

Thanks COOL :o

No you are wrong here the most forked coins in past one year is called Dash please check the google about forked coins from Dash thate are like 30-50 dash forks.
the reason Dash been forked like that is.
1.Masternode.
2.Masternode.
3.Masternode.
Yeah this concept will boom in 2018 for sure now a days every coin wants its masternode through private send.

what if 50/50? which one is BTC

Well the other three are the products of central banking morons. And we can see their motives from far away. That is to destroy Bitcoin.

In this extremely unlikely scenario I feel like the legacy chain would still be considered the real bitcoin and therefore be given the BTC ticker. Simply because it is the eldest and has the core team behind it. You're going to need at least 99.9% of support before even thinking about getting the BTC ticker for a forked version of bitcoin.

I think it's all about community. Many people have confidence in bitcoin. :-* :-* :-* :-*

This is actually the hand work of miners to get people lost their real BTC "mark me on this" BTC fork will never stop until they achieve their aim, some exchanges not to mention are in collaboration of this.
The more the fork the more BTCfork in exchanges till when people make mistakes of which truely is the main BTC and there is their jackpot.

BTC have been a resistant to all its fork because its value gets multiplied every blessed time.

Yeah exactly. I don't think it necessarily needs to be the core team in charge of the main chain but they have done okay so far. Decisions just need to be made 10x quicker.

Hopefully once we fork a few times all of those idiots drop out of the bitcoin community.

Bitcoins is most famous among other forks,  it has nothing to do with others,  it's just that it is first introduced in the market. It's just a matter of market share, merchant acceptance, amount of exchanges.  Bitcoin is continously growing the reason people prefer it more than others.  Because bitcoin is older one.  Bitcoin is continously growing. Its prices fluctuates more than others cryptocurrencies.  Bitcoin is famous and has large investment than other crypto currencies.

Bitcoin is the most predominant one, only because a huge number of miners and the community supports it.
If the community and the people decide to favor a fork of Bitcoin to the original Bitcoin, then most likely a fork of bitcoin will be predominant.

I do not think we are going to see that many forks, the reason for all of these forks happening in a quick succession has to do with the internal division of bitcoin regarding how to scale the network, some wanted small blocks and with scaling off the network, and some wanted all the scaling done in the network and big blocks but as all of these forks materialize there is not going to be any more reasons to create more forks.

Bitcoin is already heavily adopted and unless it does something drastically wrong I can't see it falling from the spot it holds. That doesn't mean an alt can't run along side it but it will always be the original that everybody knows, it is a brand of its own and to the non-initiated is synonymous to all cryptos

Segwit wasn't a hard fork to be clear, it was a soft fork. Which means it is the same chain, you never needed to update your client, it would follow the same chain as the segwit nodes. Segwit soft fork was just an agreement by miners that they will not accept certain types of transactions from certain addresses unless they satisfy certain criteria. This made special types of transactions possible and a special type of ownership over coins. To the rest of the outdated network, all seems good, a little weird if a human looks at it as it would appear that there are many unclaimed coins that anyone can spend, but those transactions would never get confirmed unless they add separate proof that they are the actual owner of those coins.

IMHO bitcoin also have many problems. Its too slow. Comission its too big. I thing in future bitcoin can go down, and some of alts go on top1 (NEM ETH or LTC).

Bitcoin is the original coin created by satoshi.
Other coins like BCH and others are just an act of creating clones of bitcoin by hard forking and claiming to be the original bitcoin.
But segwit 2x would definitely create some serious issues as it has majority miner support and it may replace the legacy bitcoin.If it does not has enough support,then another coin bitcoin segwit 2x would be created.
It has even support of more companies related to bitcoin.

Well technically  speaking if you are the one who is let's  say using bitcoin the longest and one of the veterans here in bitcoin wouldn't  you think that you are the most trusted and reliable among users same goes bitcoin because its been around for a long period of time its why people have relied on it. It's  the most trusted among all.

The more people use same cryptocurrency - the safer it is.
So only when half of people that are using BTC now will ALL select one cryptocurrency - only then it can be better that BTC

This is why I do not like definitions that are up to interpretation, the original bitcoin is the one that was created by satoshi, even if that chain eventually dies that will still be the original bitcoin, even if another fork gains more support from the miners or the community that only makes it the most popular among that group and that does not give to it the status of the original bitcoin.

Maybe because it is the pioneer of all cryptocurrency or let us just say, it has created the most goodwill or the name that imprinted into the minds of people.  So, just like other business that establishes its name, bitcoins have made a nice splash during its birth that people remembered its name until today.  So in doing business, building a name is very important.

Same reason why MP3 is the most popular audio codec for music. It's the first to actually provide good-enough compressed audio and gain market share. (hint: the best codec is Opus Audio, but few people know about it. And it will require special software to play-back.)

Maybe this will sound strange but bitcoin is actualy mainstream among the cryptocurrencies. And it's only one that is original, all other bitcoin connected coins are bad copies, I would say. That is why people use it, they trust it. And people use and trust the things that have some real value and they positive experience with. And the more users support it, the more valuable and trusted will become, so there are many reasons.

By bad copies do you mean that they fail to do what Bitcoin originally set out to do, or do you mean that they don't offer enough unique features to stand out on their own? To answer the overall question it'd be interesting to look at what the competition has to offer and which cryptocurrencies have the potential to overtake Bitcoin in the possible future.

I think it's just semantics and what name eventually becomes the dominant one in use.  Your question could be interpreted in a few different ways.  BCH, etc. all originated from the original Bitcoin blockchain, so perhaps the simplest form is to differentiate all subsequent forks as being a different (derived from Bitcoin) name, and perhaps if one of those forks eventually became more favored in common use than the orginal, then the newer fork might eventually come to be called "Bitcoin".  If I had my personal preference though, all subsequent forks would be named differently, the way they are done now.  A newer fork supplanting Bitcoin, and then becoming known as Bitcoin would be too confusing.

How do you determine which one is original BTC and which one is clone? In case of BTC/BCH there were two identical blockchains. And even developers splitted to two different groups.

Only thing, that made it being "original BTC" was, that one blockchain contiuend under original BTC name, another one under new name. But they were identical. Same will go for a new hardfork.

It's nice to think of Bitcoin as the original, the thing created by Satoshi Nakamoto.

But over time we may see some splits to remain true to his original concepts.

Not saying that's good or bad, only that it could happen.

The main reason that I see is mainly because the believe people have in the core bitcoin is still strong as ever and even the stakeholders are the ones pushing for the continued dominance of the original bitcoin. For example on the forum here, anything other than BTC is pushed to the alt section that tells tells you the larger forum of crypto enthusiasts had already picked a side.

Going forward to the exchange sites, majority of them treat every other coin as an alt while its possible to change every other coin to btc, not every coin can change to the other forks. Another is the conversion to to fiat which is mostly predominantly on bitcoin compared to other forked coins.

It is a matter of perception. We call the current BTC the "real bitcoin" because it has the longest PoW, it has the BTC ticker symbol, and the Bitcoin Core team endorses it. These are the key indicators. A 4th, less persuasive, indicator is being most "true" to the original bitcoin code or intentions of Satoshi Nakamoto. In most of the chain splits so far, one side of the chain received a clear majority of these indicators--typically the first 3. Proponents of the minority chain often claim their version is more true to the Bitcoin spirit. BCH may have a reasonable claim to this. Few are convinced.

Yes exactly that's how it is currently been happening right now with the forked coins. Most investors and quick traders really converts their btc to fiat cash after the good price really updated with the system. Like if we have to trade and eth contract coins, then a trader holds the eth they have will again trade to btc in order to earn fiat cash for daily living expenses. That's why fork nowadays doesn't seem to be visible to happen due to the blockchain devs now closely monitored all transactions to be out of any major congestion.

What if those people choose to hold their bitcoin and don't bother to cash out their holding to fiat, would it improve the network? Would be the congestion lessen? In my own words here, the fork always happens when there's system error like power tripping and other hardware related concerns which downed the mining system. This scenario also contributes with the fork or the segwit2x, because those miners widens the flow of the network transactions to make easier and faster nodes processing.

Bitcoin is a great implementation of blockchain. But they have been telling us that Bitcoin can't be under inflation because of no emission. So, you can see Bitcoin emissions as hard forks such us Bitcoin Cash and Bitcoin Gold. And these emissions are more bigger than fiat currency emissions, every fork makes volume twice bigger, it is geometry progress of volume. You are merely supported by other's belief/dream/misunderstanding.

The reason is not far fetched,Bitcoin has stood the test of time and is now widely accepted by most merchants,hence the increase in it's volume notwithstanding some of it's weaknesses.

I agree here, Bitcoin can't stand it. Those forks simply improve the way Bitcoin is working therefor I agree with it.

Bitcoin is predominant because it has a future. It was built to defy all odds.

Forks have been speared with a fork, and looking at them, you know what?

They're done.

change comes slowly ,and people tend to stick to what they know and understand.in reality people are scared of change so until it gives reason beyond doubt ,most people will stay by what they know and has proven to meet their needs and wants.even though there might be a market monopoly out there i think it will be like this for as long as both parties (customers and service providers) are being satisfied .

Bitcoin has a long history, so it has a large community, fact is also bitcoin is not perfect and its development hasn´t evolved much since it´s beginning, and these maintainers of the ledgers and developers sometimes wants some advancement in the bitcoin, when they do not come to an agreement how will they handle some change in the actual system they promote a fork, which means they will use the base ledger history and from a determined point (block) they will follow their own way with the supposed changes they would like to have seen in the bitcoin, but there was not  a consensus about it. 

Because there are hundreds or thousands of Elvis impersonators.

But there's only ONE Elvis Presley.

That is incorrect, the devs are all of them following the same vision, many people try to use some definition that suits them but it is very simple the original bitcoin is the one that did not fork, the miners were the ones to fork because they are not happy with the way things have turned up and they decided to create a separate project so there is no doubt that BTC is the original coin and BCH a cheap clone.

The users and investors trust it the most

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@The_Dark_Knight: So what is the definition you'd like to see used:

1. The original chain is the one that does not make backwards-incompatible changes to their source code, or:
2. The original chain is the one that is supported by (the majority of) the current core developers.


For Bitcoin, we might use (1) or possibly either one, but for Ethereum, it is very clear that (2) has happened in the past with the big DAO-fork (resulting in Ethereum Classic).

~Wiebe-Marten
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Everybody has their own way of wanting Bitcoin to work. It is not updated as much as it should be and people try to capitalize off of this by forking.

They can fork the source code not the chain.

The most possible reason is that forking BTC will give them most profits.

Probably because it's most accepted by community.  With regards to forks, satoshi had a solution:  The chain with the most work done on them should be the predominate one.

BTC has by far, the most work (PoW) done on it.  The problem with this is that - the other forks are still having some value and as a result, are still active chains.

This is very fracturing for the community.  They should stop the forkings

Bitcoin has the highest market cap, and therefore would be considered the one that's been adopted the most. Therefore its safe to assume that its the best for a reason. With that knowledge then its only common sense that people would try to fork the best product to try and create a better version.

I also don't think its safe to assume that it is the most forked, but I also haven't checked any facts to say otherwise.

Because the bitcoin is now strong enough to create a good brand, he is the market leader and others are currently followers and imitators

Bitcoin has been around for many years and then people will switch sides instantly after forks? Those bitcoin imitations should prove their worth first.

Bitcoin at the moment is the best and most reliable crypto currency. People do not trust the other crypto currency. Personally, in addition to bitcoin, I also use bitcoin gold)

Insert Quote
The reason is not far fetched,Bitcoin has stood the test of time and is now widely accepted by most merchants,hence the increase in it's volume notwithstanding some of it's weaknesses.

Simple, bitcoin is the father and is the first crypto ever made, is hard to beat him just because the speculation on him is too big to be compared with other coins.We will see in next future.

I think its because BTC is an old stable currency, and people trust it more than to any other cryptocurrency

Bitcoin is a crypto currency that lives in the cyberworld which decentralization is occurring. Way back 2009, its value is not high as much as todays value ,many trials and struggles that the bitcoin experienced. From ups and downs bitcoin continue to survived until now that's why it is predominant crypto currency among others. Its already proven and tested from all the difficulties comparing from other crypto currencies. Today and in the future bitcoin will still a trusted and dominant crypto that will always demand in the society and soon throughout the country.

A coin is only valid when others spend money on it, and as you can see there are a lot of people who give up their bitcoin.

For me bitcoin is the predominant one it is because bitcoin is already old and survive all the crashes and and because of this bitcoin really grew and become popular among other forks and the trust begin to to develope

Being the original and first cryptocurrency would also do with Bitcoin's dominance. As it was more trusted now by more people, bitcoin's popularity continues to grow and the investors bad experiences upon investing forks leaves a lesson to every one not to easily invest in it again.As we have seen on the chart,  https://coinmarketcap.com/ it is loud and clear that bitcoin easily recovered even on the presence of hard forks and have proven its worth as the predominant coin among all those forks.

And many issues regarding those forks has been claim ever since, if you think of a person who doesn't much know about the cryptocurrency but does have a little knowledge on it, when he/she invest in crypto it always goes to bitcoin because of popularity, i think there is not much explanation on it.

Since the first bitcoin exists than others, bitcoin development is more dominant than Bitcoin Cash, Bitcoin Gold, Bitcoin SegWit2X ..
most people trust bitcoin rather than bitcoin Cash etc, because no doubt its development compared with bitcoin cash etc which is new ,,,

because bitcoin is tried and tested,after what bitcoin lassed all
Over the years,i think bitcoin deserves such trust and faith.and talking
About those fork?look had they done to the community those fork only
Commits for themselves or they're own interest but not for the sake of the
community.and what ever fork may come still nothing can defeat bitcoin
From being dominant

This thread is just becoming a place for people to spam. AFAICT, little to no meaningful discussion is happening here, so it is being locked.