Can some one please explain what is the Hard Fork, and if is good for BTC.

[donbu7]

Can some one please explain me what is the hardfork and if is good or not to Bitcoin, and what will happened next week?

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[coolcoinz]

Here's the definition for you: http://www.investopedia.com/terms/h/hard-fork.asp
What will happen next week like in 7 days? Nothing. Do you think we're going to have a fork next week?
It's a normal update. It can be good if it brings vital upgrades and no bugs, otherwise it's bad.

[kryptqnick]

I was reading about it when people started talking recently about bitcoin having big chances to face it. As far as I understood, we have now 1 unified blockchain which is, as we can see from the word itself, the chain of blocks of btc which come all from mining. Miners and btc users confirm that the btc is used in this or that transaction and also can't be used twice this way. Fork is a case in which the chain splits into two chains and thus they both exist for some time and it's up to miners and users to choose one of them. And for bitcoin this would mean a threat of price going down for quite a time till it manages to recover.

[Hydrogen]

Can some one please explain me what is the hardfork and if is good or not to Bitcoin, and what will happened next week?

The term fork comes from open source, software engineering & is derived from "fork in a road" where one road splits into two roads.

It describes a case where one open source, brand of software splits into two separate entities, with two separate developer groups.

What a bitcoin fork means is, there will be conflict when bitcoin splits into two separate parts.

A bitcoin fork is like united korea splitting into south korea and north korea.

It isn't likely to be pretty or resolved quickly or cleanly.

Of course it won't happen next week, & may never become a reality.

The mere rumor of it, is enough to hurt bitcoin's price.

And perhaps from this alone we can see that the people behind it do not have bitcoin's best interest at heart.

A fork could be an attempt to seize control of bitcoin.

Here's the definition for you: http://www.investopedia.com/terms/h/hard-fork.asp

That is an inaccurate and bad definition.

We've seen the price of bitcoin drop from $1200 down to $900 due to fork concerns.

The idea investopedia pushes that forks are benign & will be resolved quickly and conveniently are probably untrue.

A fork could spell the end of bitcoin as people lose confidence in it and fears over worst case scenarios drive the price down -- as we have already seen.

Reading that investopedia article reminds me of factcheck.org and snopes publishing articles claiming obamcare would decrease the cost of healthcare in the united states & make healthcare more available to all.

It all turned out to be lies, and that investopedia article is no different in that it looks as if it were designed to misinform the public and lead them into supporting the wrong thing(bitcoin unlimited).

A fork could be an attempt to seize control of bitcoin.

[acroman08]

Here what satoshi thinks about hard forking his network just like what satoshi said hard forking bitcoin will be a menace to the
bitcoin network.

The nature of Bitcoin is such that once version 0.1 was released, the core design was set in stone for the rest of its lifetime.  Because of that, I wanted to design it to support every possible transaction type I could think of.  The problem was, each thing required special support code and data fields whether it was used or not, and only covered one special case at a time.  It would have been an explosion of special cases.  The solution was script, which generalizes the problem so transacting parties can describe their transaction as a predicate that the node network evaluates.  The nodes only need to understand the transaction to the extent of evaluating whether the sender's conditions are met.

The script is actually a predicate.  It's just an equation that evaluates to true or false.  Predicate is a long and unfamiliar word so I called it script.

The receiver of a payment does a template match on the script.  Currently, receivers only accept two templates: direct payment and bitcoin address.  Future versions can add templates for more transaction types and nodes running that version or higher will be able to receive them.  All versions of nodes in the network can verify and process any new transactions into blocks, even though they may not know how to read them.

The design supports a tremendous variety of possible transaction types that I designed years ago.  Escrow transactions, bonded contracts, third party arbitration, multi-party signature, etc.  If Bitcoin catches on in a big way, these are things we'll want to explore in the future, but they all had to be designed at the beginning to make sure they would be possible later.

I don't believe a second, compatible implementation of Bitcoin will ever be a good idea.  So much of the design depends on all nodes getting exactly identical results in lockstep that a second implementation would be a menace to the network.  The MIT license is compatible with all other licenses and commercial uses, so there is no need to rewrite it from a licensing standpoint.

but who knows what will happen after the hard forking it might be good or it might be bad
but satoshi has a technical reason why he is against about hard forking bitcoins network.

[beerlover]

A hard fork is a change in the bitcoin protocol that makes previous versions incompatible with new one, since bitcoin has become as widely used blockchain platform, makes the developers argue that it should be treated with caution and respect, and they should make their decisions based on what the community wants, so there may be some people want actually to implement hard fork like the ethereum did, others don’t.

[Hydrogen]

One question I have about a hard fork is.

With bitcoin there can be 20 million coins.

If bitcoin is forked there will be two separate blockchains with 20 million coins each, giving us a total of 40 million coins.

This could mean the price of bitcoin will half as scarcity is halved.

If 1 bitcoin is worth $1,000, the price of 1 coin could be $500 or less after the fork.

Also retailers that currently accept bitcoin could decide to discontinue support given the two blockchains & added complexity.

If the price of btc drops by a lot, this could also lead to retailers and others who support btc abandoning it.

A fork could be a disaster.

I think others may be having the same thoughts considering btc already dropped below $1,000 over fork concerns.

[Gotottack]

One question I have about a hard fork is.

With bitcoin there can be 20 million coins.

If bitcoin is forked there will be two separate blockchains with 20 million coins each, giving us a total of 40 million coins.

This could mean the price of bitcoin will half as scarcity is halved.

If 1 bitcoin is worth $1,000, the price of 1 coin could be $500 or less after the fork.

Also retailers that currently accept bitcoin could decide to discontinue support given the two blockchains & added complexity.

If the price of btc drops by a lot, this could also lead to retailers and others who support btc abandoning it.

A fork could be a disaster.

I think others may be having the same thoughts considering btc already dropped below $1,000 over fork concerns.

No that is not the case. If there would be a hard fork that would mean there would be two bitcoins and that new bitcoin will be some kind of alt-coin. Similar to what happened to Etherium where they had two kinds of etherium. One is higher than the other and they are quite separate from each other.

[webtricks]

One question I have about a hard fork is.

With bitcoin there can be 20 million coins.

If bitcoin is forked there will be two separate blockchains with 20 million coins each, giving us a total of 40 million coins.

This could mean the price of bitcoin will half as scarcity is halved.

If 1 bitcoin is worth $1,000, the price of 1 coin could be $500 or less after the fork.

Also retailers that currently accept bitcoin could decide to discontinue support given the two blockchains & added complexity.

If the price of btc drops by a lot, this could also lead to retailers and others who support btc abandoning it.

A fork could be a disaster.

I think others may be having the same thoughts considering btc already dropped below $1,000 over fork concerns.

No that is not the case. If there would be a hard fork that would mean there would be two bitcoins and that new bitcoin will be some kind of alt-coin. Similar to what happened to Etherium where they had two kinds of etherium. One is higher than the other and they are quite separate from each other.

Yes, it will not effect total supply but new coins will goes to second category. But after a time being, it may possible one coin dominates other coin significantly or completely based of superiority in features. Under that case, we again start recognising Bitcoin as one currency.

[Hydrogen]

No that is not the case. If there would be a hard fork that would mean there would be two bitcoins and that new bitcoin will be some kind of alt-coin. Similar to what happened to Etherium where they had two kinds of etherium. One is higher than the other and they are quite separate from each other.

If you look at the investopedia page posted above, it says this:

DEFINITION of 'Hard Fork'
As it relates to blockchain technology, a hard fork (or sometimes hardfork) is a radical change to the protocol that makes previously invalid blocks/transactions valid (or vice-versa), and as such requires all nodes or users to upgrade to the latest version of the protocol software. Put differently, a hard fork is a permanent divergence from the previous version of the blockchain, and nodes running previous versions will no longer be accepted by the newest version. This essentially creates a fork in the blockchain, one path which follows the new, upgraded blockchain, and one path which continues along the old path. Generally, after a short period of time, those on the old chain will realize that their version of the blockchain is outdated or irrelevant and quickly upgrade to the latest version.

http://www.investopedia.com/terms/h/hard-fork.asp

If a hard fork occurs, both versions will be treated as bitcoin until the situation is resolved.

Ethereum isn't a good example of how a fork affects price/value. Eth didn't have many users or miners when its multiple forks occurred.

Also the situation with eth is very different. Eth has only 1 group of developers. Everytime the developers release a new version of the software which is incompatible with the old version, it is called a "fork". But this is an inaccurate label dissimilar to bitcoin's situation. Its inaccurate to label what ethereum did a fork.

Btc has multiple developer groups & its situation is completely different from eth.

[Mometaskers]

Can some one please explain me what is the hardfork and if is good or not to Bitcoin, and what will happened next week?

I'm also trying to wrap my head around it since I don't understand the technical details but basically we would end up with two different bitcoins. I'm not familiar with the blockchain but I suppose it would also split. The only worry I have is that this would also split miners which might affect how much the two bitcoin's transactions would be handled.

There seem to be no clear time frame for the fork. It appears they're still trying to get more support.

[bitart]

Can some one please explain me what is the hardfork and if is good or not to Bitcoin, and what will happened next week?

I'm also trying to wrap my head around it since I don't understand the technical details but basically we would end up with two different bitcoins. I'm not familiar with the blockchain but I suppose it would also split. The only worry I have is that this would also split miners which might affect how much the two bitcoin's transactions would be handled.

There seem to be no clear time frame for the fork. It appears they're still trying to get more support.

Last week it seemed that there will be no fork at all, because of the replay attack problem in BU.
I don't know if it has been resolved or not, but the news was about that BU supporter nodes has decreased.
Exchanges said that they'll treat BU coin as an alt.
These things don't help BU and the fork.
If you want to be on the safe side, move your coins from exchanges and from web wallets to a kind of wallet that let's you handle you your private key (or buy a hw wallet).
This is only precaution. You won't know when the fork happens, if it will happen anytime. So nobody will tell to you when will be safe to transfer back your coins from the safe storage...

[genny2kuk]

I like to think that the BU proponents are experimental about this. There is no telling the effect that will arise from this issue. Yet it seems that bitcoin is at a defining moment in its lifetime. My hopes are that the hard fork be approached with the interest of the community at hand. Left for me, the cause of the 2 versions be resolved by reaching a middle ground for those involved.

[Yakamoto]

Can some one please explain me what is the hardfork and if is good or not to Bitcoin, and what will happened next week?

There are a ton of other good answers in this thread but I'll throw in my own ELI5 explanation as to the whole kerfuffle.

Bitcoin runs on the blockchain, however other people can make their "own" blockchains that act like independent cryptos. A fork is taking the network and changing to another blockchain, incorporating any changes to the code along with it.

A soft fork is typically a small change, a hard fork is a large change with (typically) changes to the main code, along with everything else to be incorporated.

[Mometaskers]

Can some one please explain me what is the hardfork and if is good or not to Bitcoin, and what will happened next week?

I'm also trying to wrap my head around it since I don't understand the technical details but basically we would end up with two different bitcoins. I'm not familiar with the blockchain but I suppose it would also split. The only worry I have is that this would also split miners which might affect how much the two bitcoin's transactions would be handled.

There seem to be no clear time frame for the fork. It appears they're still trying to get more support.

Last week it seemed that there will be no fork at all, because of the replay attack problem in BU.
I don't know if it has been resolved or not, but the news was about that BU supporter nodes has decreased.
Exchanges said that they'll treat BU coin as an alt.
These things don't help BU and the fork.
If you want to be on the safe side, move your coins from exchanges and from web wallets to a kind of wallet that let's you handle you your private key (or buy a hw wallet).
This is only precaution. You won't know when the fork happens, if it will happen anytime. So nobody will tell to you when will be safe to transfer back your coins from the safe storage...

I actually converted my paltry stash to fiat now but kept it in the exchange. I might use it to buy more when the price drops but if things get worse I'd probably just leave...

[Qartada]

It's good for Bitcoin if you think it is.  It's just a change which involves a new coin being created based on the same chain after a majority of the hash rate for mining supports the update - it would also be a change in the development team.  Most people don't think it's good because of the division among the Bitcoin community and potential problems with the price.