FYI the segwit2x fork this post was probably mainly motivated by appears to have been called off:
<a href="https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/pipermail/bitcoin-segwit2x/2017-November/000685.html" rel="nofollow">https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/pipermail/bitcoin-segwit2x...</a>
We attempted to snapshot the current situation with <a href="https://imgur.com/Zlopq7S" rel="nofollow">https://imgur.com/Zlopq7S</a><p>May be outdated now that 2X has been called off
That helped but I do not understand the economic compatibility of a fork. How do they not wreak havoc and chaos on that coin's economy? Do I get coins for each of the new coins or do I have to pick? It all feels really risky and that risk feels foisted upon me. Can I cash out before the fork?
Do a little searching on the people pushing the "2x" Fork - Here's one example, CEO of OP's link Coinbase.com:<p>>Coinbase CEO Owns More Ether Than Bitcoin - Coinjournal<p>>Coinbase CEO Armstrong: Ethereum Scaling Better Than Bitcoin<p>Another example, The head coder on the "2x" fork has announced his own coin to ICO soon,<p>> Jeff Garzik, ... has seen its shortcomings firsthand. So he decided to create a better digital currency.<p>All the people pushing the 2x fork are very heavily invested in coins competing with Bitcoin. It's odd.
Here's another stupid question: Can anybody start a new fork?<p>Let's say, I invested in the original Bitcoin. Then somebody who has the marketing resources to build enough interest in a new coin comes along and decides to fork. Because of the hype around the new coin type, enough people are willing to trade it after the fork.<p>I'm being given the same number of coins of the forked kind and the value of my original coins drops by the difference in value compared to the new coins (or around that).<p>If I'd rather only invest in the original Bitcoin, I'd have to sell the forked coins immediately and buy the original Bitcoin back just to keep my investment value the same.<p>If anybody can come along and fork:<p>That sounds like in the world of stocks, a competitor could come along and decide to split the stocks of MY company from the outside, driving down the price of my stocks (me as the company's owner or investor) and there's nothing I can do about it.
Ok, stupid question: in real dollars, if I sell my ONE coin just before a fork or my then TWO coins right after the fork, will I end up with the same dollar amount?<p>For that to happen the old coin type would have to lose in price at which the fork starts. How is the price for a coin of a fork determined?
So you have a ledger... Somebody makes a copy of it and adds "Gold" or "Cash" to the title. Then continues to use that ledger with some people however they want.
This is an interesting paradox because the whole point of the system was that it was decentralized, and once set in motion the rules could not be changed.<p>Or so they can?<p>And who decides?<p>Because these forks can have considerably favourable or negative outcomes for specific stakeholders, it's nary impossible to make the decision 'fairly' and this rather undermines the whole thing, no? And yes, I do understand that 'value' may be the same after such 'forks' but different post-fork mechanisms will imply different outcomes, surely.<p>Would it be possible for nefarious actors to wedge themselves into this process? ... Because we were all looking for the 'technical fault' in the maths/encryption, we possibly missed this aspect of risk?
Physically a BitCoin is, when you look at it with your own eyes, nothing, not even air. And probably everyone knows what a fork is (metal thingy for eating stuff) ... so here is your answer. Everyone else who says otherwise, is probably employed by Bitcoin ;)
So a Bitcoin fork is a kind of a git branch or at least one could think of it so. In this sense, it would be interesting to implement this possibility as a feature. Then everybody could start a new branch using new software branch. What is important, all such forks/branches will share the same parent paths (previous transactions). Essentially, all transactions will be represented as a git-like tree where each branch is managed by the corresponding software version.