Forking of Bitcoin into new coins, a step too far?

[Kakmakr]

Bitcoin has recently been forked into coins like Bitcoin Cash and also Bitcoin Gold. This added a lot of complexity to a technology that are already been perceived as being too difficult to comprehend for the average Joe on the street.

I get a lot of friends who has bought Bitcoin before these forks, who approach me for help on splitting these coins. They are totally confused with this whole business.

Questions I get is as follows :

~ How do I split these coins?
~ Where do I sell these coins?
~ What exchange support these coins?
~ What wallet can be trusted?
~ How many coins do I own, if I used Coinbase/Xapo etc.
~ I stored my bitcoins on a hardware wallet, but my hardware wallet does not support these coins.
~ Will I lose my bitcoins, if I sweep these forked coins into one of these other wallets?
~ I thought Bitcoin had a limited supply, will these coins increase the coin cap and influence the value of my bitcoins?
~ When will <insert third party service> support these forked coins?
~ What happens if I send forked coins to the wrong wallet address? <Example BTC to Bitcoin Cash>

Fortunately I am available to help with many of these questions, but I feel sorry for the average Joe who invested in Bitcoin and has nobody to answer his/her questions.

Did  we alienate the average Joe investor, by adding too much complexity with all of these forks?

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[jseverson]

I don't think so. I guess it could be a little complex once they start trying to claim airdrops and stuff, but otherwise, getting into Bitcoins is pretty much the same as before these forks started popping up. If you think about it, questions about forks have nothing to do with Bitcoin itself. The steps in investing is exactly the same, except there are a few optional steps on top of it. All newbies really need to know is that these are altcoins which only really share the name, and some of the underlying technology. It's a little confusing for sure, but nothing a quick Google search can't fix.

[buwaytress]

It depends on how you see Bitcoin in the first place. Arguably, it already alienates an entire generation of people who aren't technologically inclined for this new way of perceiving currency (as a 2014 social experiment even with MIT students implied). But I've always seen a slight difference in Bitcoin users and Bitcoin investors. Investors may have driven up the price recently, but it is the users who are to be credited for long-term implications of recognition, acceptance, adoption... legitimisation.

Even the most novice of Bitcoin users (I see myself firmly in this category) had to learn everything from scratch. The time users invest into learning, researching and understanding Bitcoin - to only be able to scratch the surface should be enough to use its most basic functions, and then later to learn intermediate knowledge of accessing forked chains, wallets, exchanges...

Hopefully, our learning and onward sharing of that knowledge with others can encourage more people to actually use Bitcoin, not simply "invest" in it.

[bear100]

You know, most experienced user of crypto were simple Joe someday long ago. And how did they become experts in crypto? Lots of reading, surfing the cryptowebsites, forums, maybe some books, online-coursers. And, of course, lots of bitcointalk forum) The new users can ask for help here or read a lot of materials, which can be easily found in the web.
As for forks, I think there are very small amount of attention-worth forks of Bitcoin. For example, there is a new fork called Lightning Bitcoin (from block 499999). And so? What new desirable idea it has brought?

[ralle14]

They could just search for the answers there's a lot of article that you can find about forks. If the answers don't help then tell them to go here in the forum and make a thread on the Beginners and Help section when you're not available to answer their questions. Imo understanding forks is not that hard because all of the answers can be easily found online.

[Mometaskers]

Bitcoin has recently been forked into coins like Bitcoin Cash and also Bitcoin Gold. This added a lot of complexity to a technology that are already been perceived as being too difficult to comprehend for the average Joe on the street.

I get a lot of friends who has bought Bitcoin before these forks, who approach me for help on splitting these coins. They are totally confused with this whole business.

Questions I get is as follows :

~ How do I split these coins?
~ Where do I sell these coins?
~ What exchange support these coins?
~ What wallet can be trusted?
~ How many coins do I own, if I used Coinbase/Xapo etc.
~ I stored my bitcoins on a hardware wallet, but my hardware wallet does not support these coins.
~ Will I lose my bitcoins, if I sweep these forked coins into one of these other wallets?
~ I thought Bitcoin had a limited supply, will these coins increase the coin cap and influence the value of my bitcoins?
~ When will <insert third party service> support these forked coins?
~ What happens if I send forked coins to the wrong wallet address? <Example BTC to Bitcoin Cash>

Fortunately I am available to help with many of these questions, but I feel sorry for the average Joe who invested in Bitcoin and has nobody to answer his/her questions.

Did  we alienate the average Joe investor, by adding too much complexity with all of these forks?

I'm one of those average Joes that just went in for profits and got confused with the forks. Really, I haven't even bothered splitting the coins I left in my Electrum wallet.

I think the main effect here is maybe frightening the more conservative investors. I can imagine them asking "but, if you are saying this is a good investment, why are they splitting?". The more adventurous ones would probably take this as a chance to make some quick bucks.

[synapsisxxx]

My concern is,  what will be the use cases for these bitcoin airdrops in the long run? They wont be affiliated to any working product or service and yet are extremely highly pricedeven now. 

[Bamselk]

Significant forks are unlikely to continue happening.  There are many forks trying desperately to ride off the backs of the last two, but pretty much failing.
Despite not being a very technical user, I can still easily answer pretty much all of those questions.  With clear enough resources, it would theoretically be possible for everyone to know this information in pretty decent time.

[cellard]

Bitcoin has recently been forked into coins like Bitcoin Cash and also Bitcoin Gold. This added a lot of complexity to a technology that are already been perceived as being too difficult to comprehend for the average Joe on the street.

I get a lot of friends who has bought Bitcoin before these forks, who approach me for help on splitting these coins. They are totally confused with this whole business.

Questions I get is as follows :

~ How do I split these coins?
~ Where do I sell these coins?
~ What exchange support these coins?
~ What wallet can be trusted?
~ How many coins do I own, if I used Coinbase/Xapo etc.
~ I stored my bitcoins on a hardware wallet, but my hardware wallet does not support these coins.
~ Will I lose my bitcoins, if I sweep these forked coins into one of these other wallets?
~ I thought Bitcoin had a limited supply, will these coins increase the coin cap and influence the value of my bitcoins?
~ When will <insert third party service> support these forked coins?
~ What happens if I send forked coins to the wrong wallet address? <Example BTC to Bitcoin Cash>

Fortunately I am available to help with many of these questions, but I feel sorry for the average Joe who invested in Bitcoin and has nobody to answer his/her questions.

Did  we alienate the average Joe investor, by adding too much complexity with all of these forks?

If you are too stupid to learn how to access fork coins, most likely you are too stupid to keep your private keys safely and therefore you shouldn't even be investing on bitcoin in the first place, to be honest.

Bitcoin is not buying some coins in Coinbase or Xapo with your wage and leaving it there waiting for the next pump to sell them. These are the people that always end up losing their money.

If someone can't learn these things for themselves, they are not bright enough to be on bitcoin and get rich with it. Forking the coin was always there for anyone to do. If a bunch of trolls want to create a million versions of bitcoin, it's not my problem, you can ignore them if you don't want to get all that free money.

My concern is,  what will be the use cases for these bitcoin airdrops in the long run? They wont be affiliated to any working product or service and yet are extremely highly pricedeven now. 

The same use cases as altcoins: selling it for more BTC.

[Lieldoryn]

If you use Xapo no problem. You are given free coins in the wallet there is a new tab. When you visit this tab offers instructions on how you can use coins. Xapo does not support bitcoin cash and therefore until 14 December you need to decide their fate. You can transfer them to another wallet or they will be converted to btc automatically.

[BrewMaster]

i don't think so. because the Average Joe usually don't even know about these forks to begin with. they may hear about them in passing and only before these forks take place and never even hear them if they come in after the fork happened. and with each fork the "hype" diminishes too. you can see bitcoin cash made a lot of noise, then bitcoin gold a little less, then bitcoin diamond didn't even make a sound. the same with bitcoin silver. even SegWit2x when they made the market for it!!

and pretty soon i do believe these forks will disappear and new forks won't be created anymore. it is still pretty tough to create a bitcoin fork and be able to make people run the full node of created coin when the blockchain is this big!

[ss890]

The first thing is that you should always own the bitcoin into wallet for which you own the private keys. That is more or less per requisite for any kind of forked coin availing. This is because your bitcoin public address or share key provides the detail about your holding at the time of fork and thus your account can be credited easily with equivalent fork coins. Now as I can see you used coinbase and xapo then you most probably lost some forked coins which were based on private keys principle and those coins which they did not support at all.

However you can try to raise the support ticket to both parties and hope for the response from them and check for any possible coin that might be just seating around there. :-)

[Da2ja3]

Lol, an average joe needs to read and understand a thing before putting his money into it. You just don't delve into a business without proper research, there is a term for it(DYOR = Do your own research). There are thousands of articles, simplified one that is available on the internet for an average joe. Theres a reason for forking of a coin, there is a process to forking of a coin. Read!!!! read!!!!! read !!!!

[webtricks]

Did  we alienate the average Joe investor, by adding too much complexity with all of these forks?

I guess no. The complexity isn't limited to fork alone. Using Bitcoin on whole involves much complexity.
Now average Joe invested in Bitcoin becuase he wanted to earn profits via forks. So he had to go through right channels if he really cares to make profits.
Moreover, we can't simplify fork procedure, nobody forcing average Joe to actually claim forked coins. He can still make profits via BTC rally!
By the way, my suggestion for average Joe is to use exchanges in order to receive forked coins rather than using private keys which have more complexity as well as higher chance of getting scammed. 

[will_k]

Like BCH, forks that end up with some values will pressured the exchanges to split and support the coins for the users, and the average joes will eventually realize that keeping their coin on the centralized exchange service is the simplist way to get their shares.  So back to the centralized services they go

[The_Dark_Knight]

Bitcoin has recently been forked into coins like Bitcoin Cash and also Bitcoin Gold. This added a lot of complexity to a technology that are already been perceived as being too difficult to comprehend for the average Joe on the street.

I get a lot of friends who has bought Bitcoin before these forks, who approach me for help on splitting these coins. They are totally confused with this whole business.

Questions I get is as follows :

~ How do I split these coins?
~ Where do I sell these coins?
~ What exchange support these coins?
~ What wallet can be trusted?
~ How many coins do I own, if I used Coinbase/Xapo etc.
~ I stored my bitcoins on a hardware wallet, but my hardware wallet does not support these coins.
~ Will I lose my bitcoins, if I sweep these forked coins into one of these other wallets?
~ I thought Bitcoin had a limited supply, will these coins increase the coin cap and influence the value of my bitcoins?
~ When will <insert third party service> support these forked coins?
~ What happens if I send forked coins to the wrong wallet address? <Example BTC to Bitcoin Cash>

Fortunately I am available to help with many of these questions, but I feel sorry for the average Joe who invested in Bitcoin and has nobody to answer his/her questions.

Did  we alienate the average Joe investor, by adding too much complexity with all of these forks?

It was bound to happen, ETH has icos, bitcoin does not have that but now they found a way to do something similar and that is why we have seen so many forks, I have counted at least 10 different forks that are planned and as you may guess not a single one brings anything new, so that is just a lame attempt to make money but it seems it is working taking into account the number of forks.

[Hydrogen]

I think the general consensus is people will continue to fork altcoin spinoffs of BTC as long as it remains profitable. There could be upsides to this in terms of the public making an effort to educate themselves on the implications of forks. The more informed and knowledgeable crypto's userbase is, the better able we'll be to support the right policies and decisions in the future as a community.

The block size debate is a good example. In order for the crypto community to support the right stance on block sizes, people must be informed and knowledgeable on the topic. Perhaps forks and details relating to crypto should be encouraged to elevate the learning curve and entice people into making a better effort to learn the basics. It might also help prevent scams if people were better informed and cut down on some of the negative aspects of crypto.

[Kakmakr]

They could just search for the answers there's a lot of article that you can find about forks. If the answers don't help then tell them to go here in the forum and make a thread on the Beginners and Help section when you're not available to answer their questions. Imo understanding forks is not that hard because all of the answers can be easily found online.

Reliable information is not readily available and it takes even expert users a lot of time to sort through all the junk to get to the gems. If you were faced with this mountain of work to get answers, then you would think twice about investing in the future and that is the point I am trying to make here. ^grrrrrrr^

We should make this process as smooth as possible for Bitcoin to be an attractive option to invest in.

[congresowoman]

I think the general consensus is people will continue to fork altcoin spinoffs of BTC as long as it remains profitable. There could be upsides to this in terms of the public making an effort to educate themselves on the implications of forks. The more informed and knowledgeable crypto's userbase is, the better able we'll be to support the right policies and decisions in the future as a community.

The block size debate is a good example. In order for the crypto community to support the right stance on block sizes, people must be informed and knowledgeable on the topic. Perhaps forks and details relating to crypto should be encouraged to elevate the learning curve and entice people into making a better effort to learn the basics. It might also help prevent scams if people were better informed and cut down on some of the negative aspects of crypto.

Why is forking necessary? Splitting bitcoin into bitcoin gold, diamond, et al. Will result to much shitcoins and even give birth to unecessary coins as well. I really don't get it though.

[TorbjornE]

The forking allows you to climb directly to many exchanges and get good publicity.