Bitcoin Core, Bitcoin Cash, Bitcoin Gold, and Bitcoin 2x... Oh my!

[CoinHoarder]

(This is the first part in a series of posts in which I aim to thoroughly describe my viewpoint on the recent Bitcoin forks. Reading only one part in this series may lead you to a wrong conclusion. Stay tuned to get a thorough snapshot of my viewpoint.)

Free Market Dynamics

I would like to clarify that the title is sarcasm. The recent Bitcoin forks are (approximately) the five millionth (more sarcasm) forks of bitcoin/blockhain technology/ideology. Many forks have come (and most have already have gone) before, and there is no doubt that there are many more to come in the future.

Read all of part one here: www.decentralized.tech/blogs/part-1-bitcoin-core-bitcoin-cash-bitcoin-gold-and-bitcoin-2x-oh-my

10/10/17 Update:

(This is the second part in a series of posts in which I aim to thoroughly describe my viewpoint on the recent Bitcoin forks. Reading only one part in this series may lead you to a wrong conclusion. Stay tuned to get a thorough snapshot of my viewpoint.)

Social Consensus

It has been years since I started following the numerous debates and commentary regarding which cryptocurrency everyone fancies. One measuring stick has always been regurgitated ad naseam. No matter how many years have passed, how many times its been debated, or whoever weighs in on the debate, different consensus algorithms are championed by different people, and for different reasons.

Read all of part two here: https://www.decentralized.tech/blogs/part-2-bitcoin-core-bitcoin-cash-bitcoin-gold-and-bitcoin-2x-oh-my

[Wind_FURY]

What fork do you support and what positive advantages do these forks have on Bitcoin? I believe only a supporter of a fork and people looking forward to split their coins will have the same sentiment as giving them a chance.

I also want to know your thoughts in Jeff Garzik's decision on not including replay protection in Segwit2x/btc1.

[affigne]

There's no end to this forking stuff...

Unless there's a significant change worthy of mass media coverage that reach to casual people and awake their interest, you'll see as many forks as you like coming at you. But Bitcoin will stay on the top of the ranking.

[hatshepsut93]

First, there is no "Bitcoin Core" fork, Bitcoin Core is a client for Bitcoin network. To put this client amongst Bcash and 2x is the same saying that Bitcoin is an altcoin. And the real problem with forks is not that they are creating them or trying to install new network rules, it's that they desperately try to take over Bitcoins name in order to succeed. Honest altcoin developers create their own original projects with original names, if they want to distribute it to Bitcoin users they launch airdrop campaign. But blatant Bitcoin forks don't have any real innovation to succeed, so their aim is to create confusion and trick people into thinking that they are the real Bitcoin.

[smartbitcoininvestor]

Get used to the forks. This is the developer's way of putting work into Bitcoin and making slight incremental improvements. Sure, the majority of the hard forks have been useless (except maybe Litecoin) but I'm sure in the future the upgrades will be significant enough that they will warrant attention from the rest of us. Bitcoin is slow, expensive and clunky, but it will be used as the legacy system for future upgrades.

The smart play here is to buy Bitcoins and hold during every hard fork. It's unpredictable to tell which forks will be more valuable than others. So immediately reinvesting your forked Bitcoins back into Bitcoin could be a very profitable strategy.

It may end up that one version of Bitcoin (Bitcoin Gold, maybe?) could become the miner's favorite, the original Bitcoin could be the investors favorite, and maybe some type of Bitcoin in the future will benefit banks and corporations. Maybe we'll have the perfect version with 0 transactions fees, and instant confirmations.....who knows. Even if each new version feels the same, the point is that each hard fork is an upgrade of some kind. 

[heisenberg0000]

Same as the August 01 fork. I believe this will make bitcoin more stronger. Will have some minor collapse though before a rapid growth.

[centralbanksequalsbombs]

Forks are a courtesy brought to you by DCG group of companies led by Barry Silbert with his fellow minion Jeff Garzik and friend Roger Ver. Central banks love to fund their operations so they can get inside the community to circumvent Bitcoin's progress and try to destroy bitcoin.

Luckily their attempts have been marked by continuous failed altcoins...
"Bitcoin Classic" failure
"Bitcoin XT" failure
"Bitcoin Unlimited" failure
"Bitcoin Cash" failure
coming soon..."Bitcoin Segwit2x" (BTC1) failure

Recommend reading post: "Hacks Puppets and Forks - How to destroy Bitcoin"
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1834310.20

hacks (these people may have been well-meaning previously...but people change...):
Mike Hearn : “the "Bitcoin experiment" has "failed." goes on to Ethereum an app coin.
Hearn - Big Bank Bitcoin Bully - https://medium.com/@tradertimm/hearn-big-bank-bitcoin-bully-c61531c082e#.okh9viyze
Craig Wright - desperately claimed to be Satoshi & then flees fraud trying to file a bunch of IP patents! LOL!
Mark Karpeles
Paul Vernon
Josh Garza
Roger Ver
Jeff Garzik (2017 recent; hard forking BTC1 / segwit2x)
"Jeff Garzik wants you to connect to his Bitcoin transaction analytics (spy) company Skry, by default, in the SegWit2x fork. Jeff is a sneaky snake!":https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/6n9grc/jeff_garzik_wants_you_to_connect_to_his_bitcoin/
Barry Silbert (and his DCG portfolio of companies-ie Coinbase, Bitpay, sponsoring ilk of Jeff Garzik characters)

 

[krishnapramod]

Although forks are good for a free market, it does not mean that we have to agree with the fork, nor does it automatically mean that the fork is a good investment either. Ultimately, the best fork will win out eventually. That is the beauty of the free market. So, sit back and relax, and fork Bitcoin as much as you like, because we are better off because of such at the end of the day.

It's free market, and I do agree that new cryptocurrencies bring innovation to the crypto market, but I do have a hard time understanding the ethics behind these Bitcoin forks. The valuation of a cryptocurrency is entirely dependant on its concept, utility, future potential, but in the case of Bitcoin forks it is simply riding on the success of Bitcoin, no real effort/uniqueness, making slight modifications, be it algo or blocksize, marketing it as another Bitcoin and then instant valuation, conjuring money out of thin air.

[25hashcoin]

Bitcoin Cash is the real Bitcoin.

[audaciousbeing]

There's no end to this forking stuff...

Unless there's a significant change worthy of mass media coverage that reach to casual people and awake their interest, you'll see as many forks as you like coming at you. But Bitcoin will stay on the top of the ranking.

The forks will keep coming and the success of it will depend on how acceptable it is to the community of users. The people who have promoted the forks believes they meant well but that is surely from their own point of view and not any thing related to the point of the generality.

A case study is the massive publicity that surrounds BCH and few months down the line we are its yet to live up to expectation which is largely due to the community. The market is gradually getting bigger than individuals and group of individuals and that's what will happen to the several other forks that will come thereafter.

[pooya87]

it is indeed a free market, and also bitcoin is open source and under MIT license but this only means you can fork it and make your own thing. this means doing something like Charlie Lee did back in 2011. he forked bitcoin and created a new altcoin called Litecoin. that is why this coin has been serious and alive for the past 6 years.

but when you fork, then use bitcoin blockchain then disrupt bitcoin market, disrupt mining (hashrate like what EDA of BCH did), and start social attacks on bitcoin like what Roger Verr and the shills like @25hashcoin a couple of comments above are doing, that is a clear attack. you can no longer call it "free market".

[kryptqnick]

Get used to the forks. This is the developer's way of putting work into Bitcoin and making slight incremental improvements. Sure, the majority of the hard forks have been useless (except maybe Litecoin) but I'm sure in the future the upgrades will be significant enough that they will warrant attention from the rest of us. Bitcoin is slow, expensive and clunky, but it will be used as the legacy system for future upgrades.

The smart play here is to buy Bitcoins and hold during every hard fork. It's unpredictable to tell which forks will be more valuable than others. So immediately reinvesting your forked Bitcoins back into Bitcoin could be a very profitable strategy.

It may end up that one version of Bitcoin (Bitcoin Gold, maybe?) could become the miner's favorite, the original Bitcoin could be the investors favorite, and maybe some type of Bitcoin in the future will benefit banks and corporations. Maybe we'll have the perfect version with 0 transactions fees, and instant confirmations.....who knows. Even if each new version feels the same, the point is that each hard fork is an upgrade of some kind. 

Is it actually correct to say litecoin is a fork of bitcoin? I thought this is rather  said about bitcoin cash, future bitcoin unlimited and soft fork bitcoin segwit which we have now as the most legit bitcoin of them all.. I think that soft forks might actually improve btc and help solving some problems but people lack consensus, unfortunately, and, as a result, everyone does their own versions of proper bitcoin thus slowly destructing the one and only.

[kevoh]

Well, whatever the case may be in all these Bitcoin forks brouhaha is for one to keep his funds in a wallet of which he has access or control of the private keys and not on some exchange. This way, after the split or fork one gets to own all forms of coins his bitcoins has been split into. If you are going to remain on an exchange when the split happens, then make sure it is the right exchange that will reimburse you with the other coins that bitcoin will split into,

[13abyknight]

There is a need to understand that forks are occurring as a result of a group of developers and users wanting to deviate away from the Bitcoin core protocol wanting to implement changes in the long existing system for betterment. We might even see forks happening just to dump the newly created coin for some quick cash in the future who knows.
More forks indicate that there is some serious contention with respect to Bitcoin core being outrun by these forked coins on the longer run especially when the block reward is decreasing exponentially as more Bitcoin is being mined every minute.

[illyiller]

What fork do you support and what positive advantages do these forks have on Bitcoin?

I support no forks. I support the legacy chain. I don't rock the #No2x hashtag because I think a lot of those guys are belligerent and ignorant and it's hard to forgive them for the BIP148 fork threat. (I bet those of you who got shaken out on the run to the $1800s would agree )

That doesn't mean I will immediately dump anything. I'll take my time and make sure that I know exactly what I'm doing when I move to split my coins and possibly sell some.

None of the forks have any advantages over the legacy chain. Fees are actually quite cheap in Bitcoin these days (I've been paying 2-5 satoshis/byte lately and getting confirmations within hours -- and that's with non-Segwit tx). Bitcoin Gold just shifts the mining centralization factors to GPUS rather than ASICs. Bitcoin Cash has a hyperinflation problem and nobody uses it. Segwit2x brings nothing to the table, technically, but the threat of supermajority miner support looms over users' heads.

[DoublerHunter]

There is nothing to worry about because they are more like being an airdrops where they give free coins to the people who got a lot of bitcoins or even those people who got small portion of bitcoin, all of the bitcoin holders will get free coins or airdrop coin from the forks so it is a free money and we should not worry for the possible problems because they are impossible to happen.

[stompix]

But we are going to have more of course.
Since there is Bitcoin Gold there must be also Bitcoin Silver and Bitcoin bronze.
Don't forget that we need a Bitcoin Lite and a Sugar Free Bitcoin.
Also we will have Bitcoin Plus and Bitcoin extra , of course with no plus or extra features.
Since Bitcoin Gold is gpu we will get Bitcoin Cpu and Bitcoin hdd alongside with bitcoin ssd and Bitcoin Led and amoled.
I don't even want to start with colors are numbers.

Bitcoincash might survive a few years but this chinese fake called bitcoin gold is going to be the failure of the year.

[RodeoX]

These forks mostly solve the big problem with bitcoin. The big problem is that the issuer is unable to steal value from you.

[Wind_FURY]

it is indeed a free market, and also bitcoin is open source and under MIT license but this only means you can fork it and make your own thing. this means doing something like Charlie Lee did back in 2011. he forked bitcoin and created a new altcoin called Litecoin. that is why this coin has been serious and alive for the past 6 years.

but when you fork, then use bitcoin blockchain then disrupt bitcoin market, disrupt mining (hashrate like what EDA of BCH did), and start social attacks on bitcoin like what Roger Verr and the shills like @25hashcoin a couple of comments above are doing, that is a clear attack. you can no longer call it "free market".

As long as the "forkers" include replay protection and does not claim that their fork is the "real" Bitcoin then I am ok with them forking away.

Another thing we should be against is when the top Bitcoin merchants and the largest miners come together to make an agreement expecting the community to follow them.

[DooMAD]

Another thing we should be against is when the top Bitcoin merchants and the largest miners come together to make an agreement expecting the community to follow them.

But what if we consider that in a different way?  For example, in capitalism generally, no company brings a product to market expecting people not to use it.  They all want people to use their products.  They bring something to market with the expectation of making money and being a profitable company.  That's how it has always been.  It's down to you, the consumer, to decide which product you want to use.  You even have the right to boycott companies if you don't believe them to be behaving ethically.

The alternative is asking for a centralised authority, usually a government, to dictate which products can or can't come to the market, with issues around protectionism, "the Nanny-State", corruption and monopoly becoming all too prevalent.  No one wants that.  Or at least, I hope they don't.  So we let the market sort it out.  The best product gets the highest market share, in theory, at least.  And agreements don't necessarily create the best products.

So why fight it when you can't prevent it without sacrificing the very thing that makes it good?  It's either a free-for-all where everyone competes, or you put someone, or a group of someones, in a position of power in the vague hope that they will protect your interests, even though it usually just turns out that they selfishly serve their own interests instead when they realise no one can stop them.

I'd argue that no one should be against it when you stop to consider the alternative.