What is a Bitcoin Fork?
You may have heard a lot of noise in the media about Bitcoin “forking”. Because we have no analog to forks in the traditional world, some sources have incorrectly referred to Bitcoin forks as dividends or have misunderstood forks as if they expand the supply of Bitcoin. The truth, however, reveals itself in market data. Unlike a stock split, where the resulting shares still refer to the original company, a Bitcoin fork is much more analogous to creating new unrelated digital assets out of thin air at zero cost, and gifting them to existing holders of Bitcoin. A Bitcoin fork does not affect the 21 million supply limit of Bitcoin itself. Let’s dive in.
Imagine you have the world’s gold stored in the ultra securely engineered Fort Knox under heavy armed guard. You build a small, poorly engineered shack and call it Fort Knox Lite, securing it with a single guard. You paint some rocks a gold color and put them in the shack. You then announce to the world that you’ve “forked gold” and issued every holder of gold an equivalent amount of free rocks inside your shack.
We need lots of miners guarding Bitcoin, making it expensive to 51% attack. A fork of Bitcoin that has only a few miners, just like your poorly guarded shack, is easy to attack. The code is probably structurally unsound, built by a small inexperienced team of developers with poor peer review, just like your shack. Forked coins aren’t accepted by any existing nodes because they break the rules of Bitcoin. Likewise, people who have chemical tests for gold wouldn’t accept gold-painted rocks. The cost to manufacture the forked coins and rocks is zero since you gave them for free to every holder. This limits the market’s interest in forks of Bitcoin.
As an example, let’s take a look at Bitcoin Cash (BCH), possibly the best-marketed fork of Bitcoin. This coin launched in 2017, at the tail of a long war over the Bitcoin block size, a parameter that affects both the transactional capacity and decentralization aspects of Bitcoin. Everyone who held Bitcoin was given equal amounts of the new coin. Many Bitcoin holders immediately sold this “costless” variety in order to accumulate more of the truly scarce original Bitcoin, driving the price lower. Although this coin shares more than 99% of its code and thus technical DNA with Bitcoin, the market has valued it at only around 3 to 4% of Bitcoin’s value. Dozens more forks followed, trying to co-opt Bitcoin’s brand name, but the market valuations of those fared even worse.
As you consider the thousands of cryptocurrencies that have been created, none of which have significant market value and almost nonexistent liquidity, ponder this paradox: creating Bitcoin forks is free and easy. However, changing the rules of Bitcoin or creating new bitcoins is anything but easy. Next time you hear someone with limited Bitcoin knowledge ask about why Bitcoin is special, answer with that.
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bitcoin debian That the most powerful players in bitcoin could not influence the network reinforced its viability, and it was only possible because of the disorder inherent to the system itself. It was impossible to collude or to coopt the network because of decentralization. And it did not just show bitcoin to be resilient, the failure itself made the network stronger. It educated the entire network on the importance of censorship resistance and demonstrated just how uncensorable bitcoin had become. It also informs future behavior as the economic costs and consequences are both real and permanent. Resources to support the effort turned into sunk costs, reputations were damaged, and costly trades were made. All said, confidence in bitcoin increased as a function of the failed attempts to control the network, and confidence is not just a passive descriptor. It dissuades future attempts to coopt the network and drives adoption. Increasing adoption further decentralizes the network, making it even more resistant to censorship and outside influence. It may seem like chaos, but really, social disorder was and will continue to be an asset that secures the network from unpredictable and undesired change.6. Bitcoin vs. Ethereum: Which One is Better?capitalization cryptocurrency bitcoin map история ethereum js bitcoin monero minergate bitcoin forum таблица bitcoin live bitcoin прогноз ethereum tether скачать bitcoin мерчант charts bitcoin
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