Layman Terms - November Bitcoin Fork

[petroaj]

Hey guys, Been spending a lot of time searching the threads for a good description on the upcoming fork, found bits and pieces but nothing complete. Also what is a fork in general.

Can you explain what exactly will happenn and why? Explain it like its your 5th grade cousin.  BTC Thoughts?

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[mensa84]

Hey guys, Been spending a lot of time searching the threads for a good description on the upcoming fork, found bits and pieces but nothing complete. Also what is a fork in general.

Can you explain what exactly will happenn and why? Explain it like its your 5th grade cousin.  BTC Thoughts?

SegWit2x was scheduled for November 2017. The developers confirmed that the hardfork will take place on block 494'784, which will be generated in November. After activating the protocol Bitcoin will switch to the improved Segregated Witness technology. This technology does not fit in with blockchain Bitcoin, and the first attempt was crowned with the appearance of Bitcoin Cash. And this time the developers do not exclude the appearance of another fork Bitcoin.

If in November there will be another split in the Bitcoin network, then this will be the third fork, which can lead to the distribution of capital and resources to three sides. To avoid a split, it is necessary to collect support for 92% of the network capacity. At the end of September, there is no such support, only 87% support SegWit2x. It says only one thing - the split can not be avoided.

The best way out for Bitcoin (BTCBTC) in the current situation will be if all new forks (bch & new) do not get user support and eventually disappear from the market.
And Bitcoin with the updated protocol will continue its journey.

[achow101]

After activating the protocol Bitcoin will switch to the improved Segregated Witness technology.

No. Segregrated Witness is already active on the network and has been active since August. The fork in November is a hard fork that doubles the block weight limit that Segwit set when it activated.

[petroaj]

Right, so it will go to 2MB, I see.

However, my question is more simple than that. Basically, just like BBC, Bitcoin Gold creates a new coin. So, in essence, at Time 0 of the fork, we have 2 coins in existence as a very similar to each other, BTC and Bitcoin Gold (with the 2 MB segwit)? Right? And so at this point, either one can move to dominate the market?? Bitcoin Gold could theoretically overtake BTC in popularity and adoption? So Bitcoin Gold is just another Altcoin that we get free because the fork is from the same blockchain as BTC?

[achow101]

Right, so it will go to 2MB, I see.

No, it will actually go to 8 MB. It changes the block weight to be 8 million which makes the largest theoretical block size to be ~8 MB.

However, my question is more simple than that. Basically, just like BBC, Bitcoin Gold creates a new coin. So, in essence, at Time 0 of the fork, we have 2 coins in existence as a very similar to each other, BTC and Bitcoin Gold (with the 2 MB segwit)? Right? And so at this point, either one can move to dominate the market?? Bitcoin Gold could theoretically overtake BTC in popularity and adoption? So Bitcoin Gold is just another Altcoin that we get free because the fork is from the same blockchain as BTC?

Bitcoin Gold and segwit2x are two completely different things. They are just like Bitcoin Cash in that they are just altcoins. Because they share a history with Bitcoin, anyone who holds Bitcoin at the time of the fork has the same amount of coins in the forked chain.

[petroaj]

So basically the "fork" is just the creation of a near-identical bitcoin altcoin? And thus, all the buzz about a fork is the question if the new and improved bitcoin will overtake the original? Am I understanding this correctly?

[achow101]

So basically the "fork" is just the creation of a near-identical bitcoin altcoin? And thus, all the buzz about a fork is the question if the new and improved bitcoin will overtake the original? Am I understanding this correctly?

Yes.

[d5000]

I would explain it a bit different (a bit more technically but I hope still understandable, maybe ELI10 ):

A hard fork is a situation where new blocks are attached to the chain according to new rules that are incompatible with the old rules.

Legacy clients would build and validate blocks that are following the old rules. But beginning with the "fork block" these old rules would not be viewed as valid anymore by the "new" clients, so they would reject all blocks coming from legacy clients.

Segwit2x is a hard fork, but as there are many Bitcoin users that prefer to stay with the original chain, a likely outcome is a chain split, because many users (probably the majority of non-mining nodes) would never upgrade. So both chains continue to exist, but one of them will take the lead.

I predict the leader will be the "legacy/Core" chain if Segwit2x does not reach at least 85% (maybe only 90% would be enough) of the hashrate for more than a few days.

[ImFire]

Well its gonna be the month of November that counts for this bitcoin Fork. I bet this person is in love and loves November thats why he basis his luck on there month of November 

[BitTitor]

I'm learning something new! Interesting.

So hypothetically if I have for example, 5 bitcoin in a personal wallet such as blockchain.info or some other private wallet, will the new BTC altcoin appear in this wallet as well?

[J. Cooper]

I would explain it a bit different (a bit more technically but I hope still understandable, maybe ELI10 ):

A hard fork is a situation where new blocks are attached to the chain according to new rules that are incompatible with the old rules.

Legacy clients would build and validate blocks that are following the old rules. But beginning with the "fork block" these old rules would not be viewed as valid anymore by the "new" clients, so they would reject all blocks coming from legacy clients.

Segwit2x is a hard fork, but as there are many Bitcoin users that prefer to stay with the original chain, a likely outcome is a chain split, because many users (probably the majority of non-mining nodes) would never upgrade. So both chains continue to exist, but one of them will take the lead.

I predict the leader will be the "legacy/Core" chain if Segwit2x does not reach at least 85% (maybe only 90% would be enough) of the hashrate for more than a few days.

That's interesting so essentially a fork is an update of the rules but since there isn't a consensus the chains fork. Clearly a lot of companies have withdrawn their support from the NYA but doesn't this allow us the reconsider the whole situation. Continuing with the fork right now is just stupid and very narrow-minded.

[d5000]

I'm learning something new! Interesting.

So hypothetically if I have for example, 5 bitcoin in a personal wallet such as blockchain.info or some other private wallet, will the new BTC altcoin appear in this wallet as well?

That depends on the wallet you are using. Most likely you must do something actively to "claim" your new altcoins - the most common way is installing a "forkcoin client" and import the private key there. But you can do that whenever you want, there is no deadline (so there is no need to hurry).

Only if you are using a centrally controlled online wallet like Coinbase and the company has explicitly stated that it will support both coins and credit them automatically, then you will receive the coins without having to do nothing. That happened at some exchanges (e.g. Bittrex) when Bitcoin Cash forked.

(But you really shouldn't use such services. Electrum, for example, is almost as easy to use as blockchain.info.)

[TheUltraElite]

I'm learning something new! Interesting.

So hypothetically if I have for example, 5 bitcoin in a personal wallet such as blockchain.info or some other private wallet, will the new BTC altcoin appear in this wallet as well?

Yes they will but they will not be visible immediately. If you own x amount of bitcoin in a wallet over which you have control of private keys then after the dork has been resolved you will have equal amount of the forked altcoin in that wallet. But to claim that amount you have do something yourself. Like for bitcoin cash claiming Electrum released the Electron Cash wallet and there is a method to claim BCH using that. Several other exchanges and casino bankroll investment sites like crypto-games asked users to put in BCH wallet address to claim their BCH if they had invested any BTC in their bankroll.

[squatter]

Clearly a lot of companies have withdrawn their support from the NYA but doesn't this allow us the reconsider the whole situation. Continuing with the fork right now is just stupid and very narrow-minded.

Actually, no one major company has left the agreement. F2pool is still signalling in support of Segwit2x, so it's not clear what their intentions are. I believe the only signatories who left were Wayniloans, SURBTC, and Bitwala. I'm not familiar with any of them after being around in this space for 4 years. Xapo and Blockchain recently reaffirmed their intention to support 2X as "Bitcoin/BTC" if miners follow through.

I'm learning something new! Interesting.

So hypothetically if I have for example, 5 bitcoin in a personal wallet such as blockchain.info or some other private wallet, will the new BTC altcoin appear in this wallet as well?

If private keys in that wallet contain BTC, then they will contain both coins after the fork, yes. But the opt-in replay protection in BTC1 was removed, so the only safe thing to do is not transact at all around/after the fork. Hopefully a form of replay protection will be added to the fork so that it's safe and easy to split the coins and send them to different wallets.

[stugots2]

will a fork like this have much impact on Difficulty?

[Karimeen]

Bitcoin is still  a mystery to most of  the people. Because of the popularity and growth many investors have enjoyed buying bitcoins .Like the first few years people were unaware of how to use internet or make benefit from it.One of the aspects of Bitcoin is it allows perfect anonymity.All transactions are recorded publically on the blockchain .It is easy to conceal your identity and make perfectly anonymous transaction,that is valuable for privacy and security.

[ann2230]

Will the fork cause the same price difference than the different fork?

[xFiber]

I'm learning something new! Interesting.

So hypothetically if I have for example, 5 bitcoin in a personal wallet such as blockchain.info or some other private wallet, will the new BTC altcoin appear in this wallet as well?

Yes they will but they will not be visible immediately. If you own x amount of bitcoin in a wallet over which you have control of private keys then after the dork has been resolved you will have equal amount of the forked altcoin in that wallet. But to claim that amount you have do something yourself. Like for bitcoin cash claiming Electrum released the Electron Cash wallet and there is a method to claim BCH using that. Several other exchanges and casino bankroll investment sites like crypto-games asked users to put in BCH wallet address to claim their BCH if they had invested any BTC in their bankroll.

I don't get what you mean by: "It's not visible immediately."
If bitcoin ends up forking the whole blockchain will be copied until the point of the fork. So as soon as it forks your bitcoin will also be on the forked chain. But in order to claim them you need to wait until a safe wallet is available, not to mention the risk of replay attacks.

[azguard]

Bitcoin Gold is scheduled to go live sometime in November. And what do we know about it.

This.
BTG is the brainchild of Jack Liao and is launching as a hard fork of Bitcoin. As any coin goal is to become a better gold than Bitcoin. Changing proof-of-work is generally going to require a hard fork and BTG has decided to go that route. The proof-of-work that they’ve chosen is Equihash, a memory-hard algorithm that’s fairly ASIC resistant and also used by ZCash. Is this ASIC resistange good solution, maybe, they’re different from CPUs in that they do only one thing, but they do it really, really well.

Hard fork is planed to be on October 25, 2017, is that does not mean that their coin launches on that day. For the moment it might be early November release, which means that their blockchain will have no blocks for a week or so in between.

This leaves final questin, how much will it be worth. Basically, if Bitcoin Gold isn’t worth very much (less than 0.0001 BTC or so), it’s probably not worth doing anything. If it’s actually worth something (say 0.01 BTC or higher), there will be tools that wallet developers will most likely write so you can access your Bitcoin Gold.

[petroaj]

Excellent explanation azguard! Thank you!

With the fork creating a new bitcoin in Bitcoin Gold, it doesnt actually do anything to BTC. My question is thus - can BTC be improved without a fork? Will it ever be able to increase processing bandwidth or transaction size without completely changing the code and creating a new coin, is this what SegWit2x is supposed to do? Or is BTC maxed out now in regards to speed and transaction size?