How 2 Chainz Would Destroy Bitcoin

[BitProdigy]

"The only thing that matters is consensus." - Andreas Antonopoulos

There are several people that are hoping for Bitcoin to split into two different chains and they are promoting this as a way to "double your bitcoins". They are motivated by greed and free money and are in support of whatever it takes to split Bitcoin in half so they can "double their bitcoins". They are therefore rooting for disagreement. They are cheering on a schism. They secretly and purposefully instigate a civil war within the bitcoin community so they can have their "bitcoins doubled."

The fallacy they fall into is two fold:

1) Inflation increases the volume of the money in circulation, but decreases the value of that money, so there is no gain in the end. Just as when a Central Bank prints billions of dollars out of thin air, the money we save and hold in our pockets becomes less valuable and prices for things go up, the same thing happens in this scenario.

If there are 1 trillion dollars in existence and it costs $1 to buy a loaf a bread, then after the money supply is doubled and there is 2 trillion dollars in existence it will cost $2 to buy a loaf of bread. There is no gain in the end as the market corrects itself.

2) There is a loss however, because by doubling the 21 million cap to 42 million, we will have broken the scarcity of bitcoin which is the core Store of Value function of Bitcoin. The fact that it happens once, means it can happen again, and thus there could be an infinite supply of bitcoins for everyone and thus BITCOIN BECOMES WORTHLESS FOR EVERYONE!!

Confidence in the scarcity of Bitcoin will be lost forever, and this will be the death of bitcoin.

It is therefore the case that those who pine for a split in bitcoin into two chains so that they can have the short term gain of doubling their bitcoins at the cost of the long term loss of DESTROYING BITCOIN FOR EVERYONE IN THE WORLD… are the greatest threat to Bitcoin in existence, and are the enemies of anyone who wants to see Bitcoin succeed.

[Holliday]

Apparently you aren't listening. It has nothing to do with "doubling bitcoins". It has everything to do with sticking to the reasons we decided to get involved with Bitcoin in the first place.

There are already hundreds of altcoins (most of them failed). The fact that they exist doesn't inflate the total amount of bitcoins and neither will a fork.

After the fork, there will be two separate coins, each with different properties, and they will succeed or fail according to their merits. Both sides may call their coin "Bitcoin", but I have a feeling only one will continue to provide what I like to call "monetary freedom".

[BitProdigy]

Apparently you aren't listening. It has nothing to do with "doubling bitcoins". It has everything to do with sticking to the reasons we decided to get involved with Bitcoin in the first place.

There are already hundreds of altcoins (most of them failed). The fact that they exist doesn't inflate the total amount of bitcoins and neither will a fork.

After the fork, there will be two separate coins, each with different properties, and they will succeed or fail according to their merits. Both sides may call their coin "Bitcoin", but I have a feeling only one will continue to provide what I like to call "monetary freedom".

So after such a schism, if I owned one Bitcoin before the schism, how many will I have after the schism? Will I not be able to spend two total bitcoins? One on each chain? And what of merchants that accept Bitcoin for payment? Will they put up a sign that says they only accept a certain kind of bitcoin and not the other chain? Will they be able to accept both as payment?

I believe Bitcoin will have been inflated by 50% sir. China inflates their currency by 2% and the whole world is in shock, you are proposing we devalue bitcoin by a 50% margin.

I am not the least bit worried though. I think these threats of two separate chains are paper tigers. Only one chain will survive. The other non-consensus anti-bitcoin chain will die after a few blocks and will no longer remain part of bitcoin. That's how this whole thing works. The longest chain survives. Good luck if 90% of the Bitcoin network is maintaining one chain and you are trying to maintain yours with just 10%.

You can be a small-blockest, or you can be a large-blockest, but what you can't do is go against consensus. That will punish you with a one hundred percent loss of income. - Andreas Antonopoulus

[silkylove]

C'mon, 2 Chainz isn't that bad.  Some of his music is kinda catchy.

[Quantus]

There can be only one true Bitcoin.

GavinCoin is just another shitty alt coin but this time he wants to use the Bitcoin ledger to bootstrap his pump and dump shill coins.
He should build his own genesis block and leave the Bitcoin ledger out of it.

[Quantus]

Bitcoin is already selling below 150 on dark pools.

[NorrisK]

Bitcoin is already selling below 150 on dark pools.

Where do you get this info? If true I'm gonna hold of buying my monthly portion of bitcoin for a bit more Don't want to see its value halve over the week

[Mickeyb]

Bitcoin is already selling below 150 on dark pools.

Where do you get this info? If true I'm gonna hold of buying my monthly portion of bitcoin for a bit more Don't want to see its value halve over the week

Yes, show me where and how to get it for $150 at the moment. I am sure everybody here would like to know this, if not to increase their personal stash, then at least to get some arbitrage action.

[Kprawn]

This whole fork business is leaving a bad taste in my mouth. People who only grasp the basics of Bitcoin must be so confused now.. it aint even funny. The psychology behind the Bitcoin protocol was always that

the basic cornerstones of the code will stay the same, and only cosmetic changes will be done to scale it. These people will now begin to wonder, what changes will be done next? If 2 guys can rally enough support

to force a hardfork, it might not be too far fetched to think that a group of people could do the same to change the more important parts of Bitcoin. I know consensus is needed for these changes, but with enough

"dark" tactics, this might be possible too. 

[Klestin]

Bitcoin has forked before. The sky didn't fall.

[dothebeats]

Bitcoin has forked before. The sky didn't fall.

But this time, it involves a lot about politics, which isn't that good for the "decentralized" nature of bitcoin. Consensus does matter, yes, but at the end of the day, the economy will decide what is what and which is which.

[monsanto]

"The only thing that matters is consensus." - Andreas Antonopoulos

There are several people that are hoping for Bitcoin to split into two different chains and they are promoting this as a way to "double your bitcoins". They are motivated by greed and free money and are in support of whatever it takes to split Bitcoin in half so they can "double their bitcoins".

You sure they're not joking about doubling their bitcoins for profit? I haven't seen anyone seriously advocating forking because they want more bitcoins. It's pretty obvious they would be devalued.

[dothebeats]

"The only thing that matters is consensus." - Andreas Antonopoulos

There are several people that are hoping for Bitcoin to split into two different chains and they are promoting this as a way to "double your bitcoins". They are motivated by greed and free money and are in support of whatever it takes to split Bitcoin in half so they can "double their bitcoins".

You sure they're not joking about doubling their bitcoins for profit? I haven't seen anyone seriously advocating forking because they want more bitcoins. It's pretty obvious they would be devalued.

My guess is that maybe people think that since there are two clients for bitcoins, one must have a lower value than the other one. In that particular scenario, one could actually sell the lower value coins over the other since they are still deemed as bitcoin. Idk how people think that they will actually have double bitcoins in this case.

[Carlton Banks]

I'm not aware that there is anything exists to confer that the scheduled fork is at all inevitable.

Says who?

[BitProdigy]

I'm not aware that there is anything exists to confer that the scheduled fork is at all inevitable.

Says who?

I think the major risk is that they set the bar too low. I don't think 75% is enough to be called "consensus" I prefer something like 90% personally.

[tvbcof]

Apparently you aren't listening. It has nothing to do with "doubling bitcoins". It has everything to do with sticking to the reasons we decided to get involved with Bitcoin in the first place.

There are already hundreds of altcoins (most of them failed). The fact that they exist doesn't inflate the total amount of bitcoins and neither will a fork.

After the fork, there will be two separate coins, each with different properties, and they will succeed or fail according to their merits. Both sides may call their coin "Bitcoin", but I have a feeling only one will continue to provide what I like to call "monetary freedom".

Well put.

I'm not threatened at all by two (or more) cyrpto-currency solutions taking their value basis from the current blockchain (which, thanks to Satoshi's 1MB patch, still fits on a single commodity-grade drive.)

I know what is important to me as a user and expect that there are a lot of others in my category.  Plenty to form a viable economy which addresses problems we have in our domain.

I go so far as to welcome the split because one of the biggest problems we have, as I see it, are people who have a diametrically opposed view of what is important and how to achieve it.  A 'divorce' is a perfectly rational and effective way to resolve such problems.

[BitProdigy]

Well put.

I'm not threatened at all by two (or more) cyrpto-currency solutions taking their value basis from the current blockchain (which, thanks to Satoshi's 1MB patch, still fits on a single commodity-grade drive.)

I know what is important to me as a user and expect that there are a lot of others in my category.  Plenty to form a viable economy which addresses problems we have in our domain.

I go so far as to welcome the split because one of the biggest problems we have, as I see it, are people who have a diametrically opposed view of what is important and how to achieve it.  A 'divorce' is a perfectly rational and effective way to resolve such problems.

The only way this could possibly work is if you guys started your own chain with your own genesis block. If you split the Bitcoin chain into two competing chains you will effectively have inflated and devalued bitcoin by 50% and also killed confidence in Bitcoin's scarcity and STORE OF VALUE function.

The only way I could be wrong about this is if after this split you are cheering on I would not have double the amount of bitcoins to spend. Would I not be able to spend bitcoins on both chains??? If my bitcoins are doubled, then you have killed bitcoin for everyone.

[maokoto]

I am glad you posted about the duplicity (1 Bitcoin becoming 2 in different chains) as I have not thought about it that way. If, as you say (and probably will happen) inflation kicks in degrading the value of both coins, people will be obligued to hold onto the 2 chains to maintain their Bitcoins savings 

Or they might also sell their coins on a chain in favor of the other but... Which one? people will be forced to gamble if the two chains keep working.

[tvbcof]

Well put.

I'm not threatened at all by two (or more) cyrpto-currency solutions taking their value basis from the current blockchain (which, thanks to Satoshi's 1MB patch, still fits on a single commodity-grade drive.)

I know what is important to me as a user and expect that there are a lot of others in my category.  Plenty to form a viable economy which addresses problems we have in our domain.

I go so far as to welcome the split because one of the biggest problems we have, as I see it, are people who have a diametrically opposed view of what is important and how to achieve it.  A 'divorce' is a perfectly rational and effective way to resolve such problems.

The only way this could possibly work is if you guys started your own chain with your own genesis block. If you split the Bitcoin chain into two competing chains you will effectively have inflated and devalued bitcoin by 50% and also killed confidence in Bitcoin's scarcity and STORE OF VALUE function.

The only way I could be wrong about this is if after this split you are cheering on I would not have double the amount of bitcoins to spend. Would I not be able to spend bitcoins on both chains??? If my bitcoins are doubled, then you have killed bitcoin for everyone.

You are way to focused on the 'money' aspect of things.  The 'capabilities' aspect is what is important to me personally.

That said, ya, I'm personally not above making lemonade out of lemons.  I'll exploit the shit out of the situation if I can.  That's a potential fringe benefit of getting a footprint in the pre-fork chain.

---

Your simplistic view is that the value basis of the Bitcoin solution is monolithic and static.  I suggest that that is to simplistic.  I'll explain:

Bitcoin has, locked within it, multiple sources of value.  They are there but not expressed at this time.  They are also mutually exclusive.  I'll simplify them to two.

 - One source of value can be best exposed by handing the solution off to (say) Google.  They can support expansion to epic levels as they have many other related things internet.  They can exploit monetization schemes denied to their lesser competitors and thus fund this immense system with probably a negative cost to the end user.  Some people consider this a win.  More power to them, and I'll be happy to join them for many of my exchange currency needs.  Just like I use Google to filter the 20,000 spam e-mails I get per day.

 - Another source of value is that Bitcoin is free of 'counter-party risk' like gold.  Separately, it is not possible for anyone really to tell me who I can and cannot transact with.  If I want to support Wikileaks because I feel that they are doing my country (the U.S.) a service in promoting transparency, I can use Bitcoin to do so.  I can also be as confident in the blockchain as a source-of-truth for my holdings as my ability to keep certain secrets (which I am good at when I put my mind to the task.)

These two things are mutually exclusive.  A split is the best way to expose both sources of value out into the '5th dimension.'

edits: slight

[BitProdigy]

- One source of value can be best exposed by handing the solution off to (say) Google.

Elect a King! We need a trust authority! You obviously either are completely ignorant of what makes Bitcoin revolutionary or you actively seek the destruction of Bitcoin.

Another source of value is that Bitcoin is free of 'counter-party risk' like gold.

What gives gold it's STORAGE OF VALUE properties are it's scarcity. You can never just double the amount of gold in the world and instantly double the amount of gold you hold. This is what gives CONFIDENCE in gold as a STORE OF VALUE.

What you are proposing is THREAT to Bitcoin as a store of value. You propose a 50% devaluation that would result in the loss of confidence in bitcoin's scarcity as people would realize that if this can happen once, it can happen again and again and again, and everyone can just have as many bitcoins as they want by splitting the chain over and over and doubling their coins every time.

This effectively makes bitcoin as worthless as leaves.