Bitcoin community splitting and two different Bitcoins existing at the same time

[Davidvictorson]

Is there a possibility of the Bitcoin community splitting and two different Bitcoins existing at the same time?

I know how crazy the question sounds but it needed to be asked after reading this opinion piece¹.Think about it for a moment, the author argues that we are yet to see any evidence that Bitcoin comes to a unanimous agreement on improving the entire transaction
capacity/payment system.

According to them, because of the decentralized nature of the Bitcoin community there  needs to be 95%
consensus inorder to upgrade the protocol in any way. And it seems unachievable to have a consensus as everyone has their own opinion coupled with the fact that the Bitcoin community is so large.This situation could lead to a dilemma where we'd have to choose
an improving system update, but if a decision is made without full consensus two different Bitcoins
could exist at the same time.

*Please note that this doesn't in any way reflect any opinion of mine.

1. https://www.sec.gov/comments/sr-batsbzx-2016-30/batsbzx201630-1617162-136918.pdf

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[Charles-Tim]

Bitcoin cash (BCH) is an example. Is bitcoin cash now regarded as bitcoin (BTC) even as there was manipulation on bitcoin.com where it was represented  as BTC.

There are forks of bitcoin and also there are forks from the forks of bitcoin, but bitcoin remain bitcoin.

What I noticed today is that the community are avoiding a way that can lead to another fork or forks. But all forks are altcoins, not bitcoin.

[o_e_l_e_o]

And it seems unachievable to have a consensus as everyone has their own opinion coupled with the fact that the Bitcoin community is so large.

We've had consensus on plenty of major changes before, such as SegWit and Taproot.

If some small niche group wants to disagree and fork bitcoin yet again in to one of the many shitcoins like BCH, BSV, BTG, BCD, and so on, then they are free to do so. You can take a look at the price graph of any one of those coins to see just how well they are doing (hint - every single one is currently hitting all times lows against bitcoin).

[pooya87]

Is there a possibility of the Bitcoin community splitting and two different Bitcoins existing at the same time?

The chance is always there but so far the majority of those into Bitcoin seems to be that we say we either reach majority consensus or don't change anything at all (ie. Bitcoin works fine as it is).

According to them, because of the decentralized nature of the Bitcoin community there  needs to be 95% consensus inorder to upgrade the protocol in any way.

I haven't bothered checking the link because this argument is pointless considering that from early days to just recently we have had many upgrades and changes in the protocol. From BIP16 (P2SH activation) all the way to BIPs 341-342-343 (Taproot activation).
We've reached majority consensus for each of them before they were activated too.

[PrivacyG]

I mean.  Most of the Altcoins in existence today are in some way a Bitcoin Fork.  Sure.  They are not named after Bitcoin and maybe they are not even a community split.  But the idea here is that you practically do already have thousands of different Bitcoins existing at the same time.  Or is it wrong to call them a Fork if they have not forked directly off a Bitcoin Block?

If that is the case.  Ethereum has unlimited Forks available.  You can create yours too if you wish.  In minutes.  Most of them have zero value.  Hell, some people would pay to get rid of their worthless Coins.  But again, not all of them came from a community decision split.  Some people just wanted to scam.  Or make money in a short time span.

[serveria.com]

Is there a possibility of the Bitcoin community splitting and two different Bitcoins existing at the same time?

I know how crazy the question sounds but it needed to be asked after reading this opinion piece¹.Think about it for a moment, the author argues that we are yet to see any evidence that Bitcoin comes to a unanimous agreement on improving the entire transaction
capacity/payment system.

According to them, because of the decentralized nature of the Bitcoin community there  needs to be 95%
consensus inorder to upgrade the protocol in any way. And it seems unachievable to have a consensus as everyone has their own opinion coupled with the fact that the Bitcoin community is so large.This situation could lead to a dilemma where we'd have to choose
an improving system update, but if a decision is made without full consensus two different Bitcoins
could exist at the same time.

*Please note that this doesn't in any way reflect any opinion of mine.

1. https://www.sec.gov/comments/sr-batsbzx-2016-30/batsbzx201630-1617162-136918.pdf

I guess you were not into Bitcoin back in 2017 when some hard forks happened (most notable being BCH or Bitcoin Cash). So, it's not a crazy scenario, similar events already happened in Bitcoin history before and therefore there are multiple "Bitcoins" existing at the same time. 

[BlackHatCoiner]

Not in any user's favor though. Just as with increasing the 21 million coins limit. There is just no change which would result in such a split that would create such a strong conflict between the Bitcoin users, that would let both versions survive.

Reminding you that the free market relies on some basic principles, one of which is the efficiency granted by converting everything into one unit. Splitting the currency in multiples is an attack to the very foundations of money, from a market perspective, because it brings discord. People will switch to the most widely used version, even if objectively inferior, because this principle simply triumph over any feature other than that; being the currency.

[pooya87]

Using bcash (and similar shitcoins) as an example in this context is wrong because in the bcash scenario the bitcoin community did NOT split into two. What happened was that a handful of people created a copy of bitcoin and tried scamming people with it.

"Community splitting into two or more" requires a large percentage of miners, mining pools, full nodes, investors, businesses, etc. existing on each side (eg. 50-50 split or 3x 33% split, etc.).

[witcher_sense]

Is there a possibility of the Bitcoin community splitting and two different Bitcoins existing at the same time?

If the community gets split into two or more fighting camps, we would have several competing forks of different consensus rules and hashrate share. It wouldn't be a competition of coins named "Bitcoin" because there can only be one that retains the original name while other forks get a different name in order to tell them from the rest of the cryptocurrencies on the market. Technically, nothing stops from creating a fork with the same name, but usually, when there is a serious hardfork, as we have witnessed during the blocksize war, a fork that has got a majority of hashrate or that retains original consensus rules keeps an old name. I would say that, as long as original consensus rules remain intact and most Bitcoin users agree to follow them, Bitcoin remains to be Bitcoin, and other forks are nothing else but forks. Should one of these forks obtain a majority of hashrate, it gets renamed to Bitcoin regardless of consensus rules conformity to "Satoshi's vision".

[digaran]

We would discard/ throwaway the nonbelievers by their own hands, followers of the new garbage fork will do us bitcoiners a favor, as in bitcoin we don't need such garbage collectors.
If you think about it, each and every fork/split trimmed the useless branches from our healthy and green tree. Point being, such events will strengthen bitcoin. After all you can't tolerate heavy hits if you haven't been heat treated.😉

[Yamane_Keto]

The reason that makes those coins or solutions are worthless is that they are cosmetic solutions to a future problem for Bitcoin, since most of hard forks were focused on increasing the block size to 16 or 32 megabytes, reducing the average time between each block, Algorithms, or coin distribution.

In the past, people used to invest in these forks because they believed that they would be valuable if Bitcoin failed, or the possibility of mining without ASCI devices, but these options have been absent in recent years due to proof-of-stake coins and the difficulty in believing the possibility of Bitcoin failure.