Despite what the heat of squealing may imply, the possibility of a hard fork is a long, long way away at present.

If you really do want to diversify then putting that into something that rose threefold in the space of a few days isn't the most prudent choice but do what makes you happy.

Nothing to do with the GBP valuation. The amount of Bitcoins you have will be doubled because you'll have a carbon copy of Unlimited Bitcoins on the other chain. Both of them will exists side by side initially at least.

And they're almost certainly going to suddenly both be worth an awful lot less.

Nope. If it can happen once with brute force and psy ops then it can happen over and over again. That's not what I signed up for. There'd be so much crowing, mind fucking and market bollocks that the whole scene would become unbearable for a very lengthy time even if everything turned out alright in the end. 



Fuck Bitcoin. Tell us about your wonderful trip instead.

Yup. And it's only going to keep on growing. I'm sure much of it sprang from pure intentions originally but there's a lot of water under the bridge now and perhaps there are many people who now only want to ram their point home whatever it takes.

That assumes that there's no nefarious intention behind the whole thing or the desire to assert control over the existing chain and break a few wills at the same time.

If they really wanted to start afresh and stand apart then it would already have happened.

As far as I can tell an operating Lightning Network would mean a vast increase in on chain fees. Even if people kept coins in channels for a long time, there'd still be waves of others coming and going and each and every one of them needs to interact with the daddy chain at some point.

Or do you think we'd have places like Coinbase offering direct USD/LN interaction with barely any on chain transactions?

It would be their single biggest money maker in history. They'll probably all retire and then some creep will set up a BTU only exchange to annoy us all.

I don't believe that. The opposing elements are becoming ever more dug in and there's enough of them on both sides to continue the stalemate. The question is whether the most important element by far, them users, somehow manages to assert their will.

Personally I think Satoshi would create a burn address along the lines of yOufUcKinGBratsruInedEveryThingFu2KokSukkAzzz69 and burn his holdings on both chains.

What's the deal with their international iterations? I assume okcoin.com stayed open and .cn was hobbled but haven't been paying much attention.

I'm going to launch an alt called Cupofcoffeecoin which will be the world's finest way to buy cups of coffee without censorship, because there's nothing worse than having your morning coffee censored.

It'll even make them taste better. It will either completely destroy Bitcoin or leave it to get on with the important stuff. I'll let you know when I've premined enough of them.

There's plenty of other avenues left such as Bitmain selling machines to you only on condition that you mine BTU. Rather sad that one little fella has this much influence.

I wonder if it really did reach that point whether they'd have the balls to take the plunge or not. The more hysterical everything gets the more likely it is I suppose.

Check the blocks mined instead of nodes. That's over 30% at present. Nodes aren't really that meaningful as many will be sitting on Amazon servers that'll go off when whoever doesn't get their pocket money.

Segwit is 95%.

The thing is though that I don't think there's much incentive to do anything in either direction. I wouldn't really be inclined to buy or sell at present. So if that means a small number does take a direction, a larger number might join in for larks.

I think it would be far, far, worse than an ETH split. For starters ETH is not the foundation of cryptoland so if it had blown up completely there's still plenty of other options. Also their technical setup makes forking a comparative breeze for both chains compared to BTC.

It came out of it rather well eventually, both bunches got what they want and ETH fans seems happy to do what Vitalik recommends, but I don't believe it would be the same for BTC. ETH has been strongly led by a small group from minute one who are still there.

Far from it. But what happens next in the event it does certainly is confirmed by that lot at least.

I don't think it does much to address the problems a fork would create though. Vast amounts of confusion would reign as both sides threw everything possible into convincing people that their chain is the most legit.

BTU would start off with a fair few people absolutely messianic in their belief that that was Bitcoin, not the other one.

And am I imagining it or was the statement changed? I'm sure I read originally that eventually the winning chain would become Bitcoin.

That's more than enough to kill it. The main problem with any crypto is the human factor but they're rather difficult to get rid of.

50% maybe, or perhaps more now I think about it. I'll see how the next weeks and months go and may start spending some. If bitcoin does fork then I'll abandon it but keep an interest in my pet alt.

There are more sellers than buyers at certain price points.  That's about it. Now ETF excitement is over there isn't anything epic on the horizon so people can go back to concentrating on being nasty to each other, and Bitcoin.

If you hadn't noticed the Chinese have had zero influence on the price recently and look what happened. For the short period China was operating like everywhere else it was a pussified shadow of its former self.

If they allow the markets to reemerge they'll have no more influence than anywhere else. Back in the day everyone was terrified of them. That was proven to be a mirage.

I don't see what fud ammo is left with China now. The only thing is mining.