Random thoughts on the recent and upcoming hardforks.

[enter`name`here]

The aftermath of the BTC/BCH split means that the market is less afraid of hard forks.

On the day of the hardfork I facetiously asked on reddit:

what is the limit then? Why don't we do a fork every day? Fuck it, lets continuously compound the shit outta this, and all go buy Maserati's
I meant that as a reductio ad absurdum but if the upcoming 2x split has a similar positive(ish) outcome, we may see the flood gates open as everyone with a half-baked idea on how to improve the network comes out with their own hard-fork.

This raises the question about the so called 21mm hard cap on the number of bitcoins. If the chain can simply be copied to infinity, doesn't that compromise the inflation-resistant properties that made bitcoin so popular amoung people concerned about the inflationary nature of the current financial system?

I do not believe so, space on each particular network will still be limited, and tokens belonging to those networks will thus be valued. But which network will be valued? And who gets to claim the bitcoin 'title'.

People mostly are looking at hash rates and price differences between BTC and BCH and probably plan to do the same thing during the hardfork in November.

These metrics are interesting and important but may I propose another way of measuring who gets the crown; the chain that spawns the most new valuable hardforks. If I esiewert, decided to create a new hardfork years down the road, I would have to choose which chain to split from. I could bcash, bseg or bseg2x. By then the ownership on each chain could be radically different. I will choose whichever one I feel has the most support behind it and / or would be most responsive to whatever changes I propose. Eventually the market will decide on a particular chain as the 'base' from which other forks happen. Speculators will pile into this everytime a fork occurs that has any value, and this chain will have massive value.

Unless I am mistaken the upcoming fork will be from the BTC / core / segwit / bitcoin chain.

HODL on gentlemen, HODL on.

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[Yoandy10]

Personally, I welcome every damn fork the developers want to create. Why? Because that'll be one more coin I will own. Simple as that. Eventually, the value of the collective will be more than the value of one. So...bring them on!

[ranih]

Personally, I welcome every damn fork the developers want to create. Why? Because that'll be one more coin I will own. Simple as that. Eventually, the value of the collective will be more than the value of one. So...bring them on!

Why do you think the collective value would be higher?
It's maybe true just in the short-term...

BTC is strong cause many people use it and believe it has value. Many forks can change that

[joseafonso123az]

I think if bitcoin gets getting hard forks and getting new coins every day, will make those new coins value nothing or almost nothing.  I guess this was the first hard fork so we gained a bit, but I dont think it will be always like that. And for bitcoin to gain more value it has to be stable and not get daily hard forks.

[Myki]

Personally, I welcome every damn fork the developers want to create. Why? Because that'll be one more coin I will own. Simple as that. Eventually, the value of the collective will be more than the value of one. So...bring them on!

If things get to that extent,, I guarantee you that many normal people will flee Cryptocurrency.

[illinest]

These metrics are interesting and important but may I propose another way of measuring who gets the crown; the chain that spawns the most new valuable hardforks. If I esiewert, decided to create a new hardfork years down the road, I would have to choose which chain to split from. I could bcash, bseg or bseg2x. By then the ownership on each chain could be radically different. I will choose whichever one I feel has the most support behind it and / or would be most responsive to whatever changes I propose. Eventually the market will decide on a particular chain as the 'base' from which other forks happen. Speculators will pile into this everytime a fork occurs that has any value, and this chain will have massive value.

This doesn't address the basis for network valuation. While price can remain disconnected from fundamentals for quite a long time, the fundamental value derived from Bitcoin and other cryptocurrency networks are the networks. Each fork is "splitting" from the original network.

In other words, with each fork, the legacy network is being cannibalized. Some users will stay on the original network, and some will start using the new network. In both cases, supporters of each respective network may dump the coins of the network they don't use. According to Metcalfe's Law, these types of network splits should significantly damage the value of both the original and forked networks, if the splits are considerable in size.

[Janation]

Personally, I welcome every damn fork the developers want to create. Why? Because that'll be one more coin I will own. Simple as that. Eventually, the value of the collective will be more than the value of one. So...bring them on!

If things get to that extent,, I guarantee you that many normal people will flee Cryptocurrency.

This is the reason they make a debate for the solution, also there are stuffs like the BIP or the Bitcoin Improvement proposals. They can't just fork out every digital currencies that they think, they are forking bitcoin uselessly if they will be doing it like that.

[cr1776]

I think two lessons from the bitcoin cash for are:
1. Have at least some hash power behind you that is committed
2. Pick a name that includes bitcoin: bitcoin2x, bitcoin adavanced etc

[FlightyPouch]

Personally, I welcome every damn fork the developers want to create. Why? Because that'll be one more coin I will own. Simple as that. Eventually, the value of the collective will be more than the value of one. So...bring them on!

Then that means a lot of hard forks, that also means there will be a lot of times where the bitcoin cannot be transacted because we will be always waiting for the time to finish the fork.

Just imagine the fork that just happened, before it takes place the bitcoin price dumps, also the bitcoin cannot be transacted, right? Now think of it if that happens every month, there will be no users that can take that all.

Personally, I welcome every damn fork the developers want to create. Why? Because that'll be one more coin I will own. Simple as that. Eventually, the value of the collective will be more than the value of one. So...bring them on!

If things get to that extent,, I guarantee you that many normal people will flee Cryptocurrency.

Not all the crypto currency, but this will be happening exactly.

[ReindeerOnMe]

I don't think that there will be another hard fork at the debate this November. I mean bitcoin cash is out and as far as I know, November is the real date when bitcoin cash will be officially forked. So again, there will be no hardforks that will happen.

[Herbert2020]

what is the limit then? Why don't we do a fork every day? Fuck it, lets continuously compound the shit outta this, and all go buy Maserati's
I meant that as a reductio ad absurdum but if the upcoming 2x split has a similar positive(ish) outcome, we may see the flood gates open as everyone with a half-baked idea on how to improve the network comes out with their own hard-fork.

a new fork is happening almost every day these days.
it is all the new altcoins that are being created. they no longer are even bound to 21 million. they create any number they wish to create from 42 coins up to multi billion coins have been created so far. and many people have gotten rich from them and bought their Maserati's! and at the same time many got poor and went broke.
none of these means it is a good idea to fork and certainly nobody is preventing you to fork bitcoin or anything else and create a new thing out of thin air.

and as for these airdrops, there are a lot of them. some cost about 0.3BTC a couple of months ago and some never went above 10000 satoshi ever. whether they are called bitcoin something or a new name that doesn't matter, they are still an altcoin. some of them have more money and they advertise more and some are poor and nobody finds out about them.

[hatshepsut93]

You are missing the fact that SegWit2x has no replay protection, it aims to take "Bitcoin" name from Core, and it's backed by more than 90% of miners and some big companies. This is much more serious than Bcash altcoin which had zero effect on Bitcoin's network. There are so many things that can go wrong with this kind of fork, so it's very reasonable that next version of Core client will be automatically banning SegWit2x peers. If this fork will happen, and it will get significant miner support, we will see serious dips in short term. But I believe that after some weeks or months of trading, everything will go back to normal.
So, yes, you are right - HODL on, gentlemen.

[Dostoyevsky]

how many fork are planned in the near future ?

bitcoin cash
segwit
segwit2x
nChain

any other one ?

[illinest]

I think two lessons from the bitcoin cash for are:
1. Have at least some hash power behind you that is committed
2. Pick a name that includes bitcoin: bitcoin2x, bitcoin adavanced etc

Definitely. I guess you just need a modicum of hashpower (compared to BTC) to keep the chain alive until mining becomes profitable, and piggyback off the name. Roger Ver alone could have propped up Bitfinex and Poloniex, and now they've got a profitable "Bitcoin" fork that's sitting in the top 3 market caps directly after launch. That's a phenomenal accomplishment for an altcoin.

[aso118]

You are missing the fact that SegWit2x has no replay protection, it aims to take "Bitcoin" name from Core, and it's backed by more than 90% of miners and some big companies. This is much more serious than Bcash altcoin which had zero effect on Bitcoin's network. There are so many things that can go wrong with this kind of fork, so it's very reasonable that next version of Core client will be automatically banning SegWit2x peers. If this fork will happen, and it will get significant miner support, we will see serious dips in short term. But I believe that after some weeks or months of trading, everything will go back to normal.
So, yes, you are right - HODL on, gentlemen.

If there is no replay protection, there is going to be nothing but chaos. This will be much more messy than Bitcoin Cash. I think there will be just 1 bitcoin after the November fork. It will be the one with the 2 MB blocks. The other chain will just die a quick death.

[vatanen]

Personally, I welcome every damn fork the developers want to create. Why? Because that'll be one more coin I will own. Simple as that. Eventually, the value of the collective will be more than the value of one. So...bring them on!

Yes, Free money again. after the "hard fork" of BCC I reacieve a free money by means of bitcoin cash. Im very welcoming all the hard forks as it gives us free money.

[illinest]

You are missing the fact that SegWit2x has no replay protection, it aims to take "Bitcoin" name from Core, and it's backed by more than 90% of miners and some big companies. This is much more serious than Bcash altcoin which had zero effect on Bitcoin's network. There are so many things that can go wrong with this kind of fork, so it's very reasonable that next version of Core client will be automatically banning SegWit2x peers. If this fork will happen, and it will get significant miner support, we will see serious dips in short term. But I believe that after some weeks or months of trading, everything will go back to normal.
So, yes, you are right - HODL on, gentlemen.

If there is no replay protection, there is going to be nothing but chaos. This will be much more messy than Bitcoin Cash. I think there will be just 1 bitcoin after the November fork. It will be the one with the 2 MB blocks. The other chain will just die a quick death.

No way. The Core developers are pretty firmly opposed to the November fork, and they carry a lot of sway with Bitcoin users. There will either be no fork (no Segwit2x), or there will be a network split. It's going to be interesting to see which miners and businesses keep supporting Segwit2x. I'm loading up on popcorn for all the FUD and excitement as we head towards November.

[Pursuer]

how many fork are planned in the near future ?

bitcoin cash
segwit
segwit2x
nChain

any other one ?

there are only 2 forks, SegWit and SegWit2x. the first one got everyone's support but the second doesn't have as much.
the bitcoin cash is just a split off to make a new coin like many other altcoins that have done this before. this is technically the same thing.
the nChain is not really a fork, it is something that was proposed for scaling, I don't know how serious it even is.

and any fork can happen at any time. nothing is stopping anyone from forking from bitcoin. you can do it right now too. you just need to have a little mining power and the knowledge of how to do it. these forks will become something only if they get the enough support

[Rinaze]

I think if bitcoin gets getting hard forks and getting new coins every day, will make those new coins value nothing or almost nothing.  I guess this was the first hard fork so we gained a bit, but I dont think it will be always like that. And for bitcoin to gain more value it has to be stable and not get daily hard forks.

August fork wasn't even a hard fork. It's a soft fork. The majority has officially voted "no" to the fork but the minority still went on ahead with the split / fork. Hard fork is when you have no choice, when the majority voted "yes" to the fork, hence the word "hard"

[angaper]

I am surprised that there are people interested in countless hardforks for the simple fact that this can generate a few pennies of profit, when in the long run a continuous division can only weaken the credibility in the efficiency of the blockchain to solve problems by which was created, and I am convinced that a divided community is a weak and vulnerable community, and on that weak basis I don't think it can be built the solid alternative that the world economy requires.