
Bitcoin May Split Many Times in 2018 - SirLJ
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-01-23/bitcoin-may-split-50-times-in-2018-as-forking-craze-accelerates
======
philipodonnell
I think this article is making a serious mistake in confusing different kinds
of forks.

We use the word fork to describe the act of commandeering the head of the
existing BTC blockchain and using your own miners to continue it in a way that
diverges from the original chain. This can have a negative effect on the value
of both chains due to inverse network effects.

We also use the word fork to describe the act of cloning a branch of code and
than adding new commits on top of it to create new software. This is good
since more coins increase experimentation and drive innovation and does not in
any way effect the existing BTC network or its value (unless you believe we
are already in a zero-sum game with cryptos where every new coin reduces BTC).

This article leads with "Some 19 Bitcoin forks came out last year -- but up to
50 more could happen this year" and then completely conflates the two by
talking about Litecoin et. al. and Bitcoin Cash interchangeably.

To my knowledge, Bitcoin Cash is the only 'true' fork that survived beyond the
splitting of the BTC chain, but please correct me if I'm wrong on that.

It would be scaremongering if I thought it was intentional.

~~~
shawabawa3
> Bitcoin Cash is the only 'true' fork that survived beyond the splitting of
> the BTC chain, but please correct me if I'm wrong on that.

There's at least a few more. "Bitcoin Gold" and "Bitcoin Diamond" come to
mind, there's also something called "Super Bitcoin". They all seems like
complete trash to me but somehow they seem to have a market value

~~~
vm
How do Bitcoin holders "receive" or trade on these forks?

Coinbase eventually distributed Bitcoin Cash but I haven't heard anything
about Bitcoin Gold or Diamond.

~~~
czechdeveloper
If you have your private key, you can just use same key to trade forked coins
(using given coin's wallet). If you don't I guess you depend on whoever has
your key. But rule of thumb is, you don't own a key, you don't own a bitcoin.

I would just move original coins to different wallet first as I'm not sure if
same transaction cannot be replayed on main bitcoin chain.

You can check here what you can get for your addresses
[https://btcdiv.com/](https://btcdiv.com/)

------
dmm
The tax situation is interesting. Many believe that you owe taxes as soon as
the funds for a bitcon fork are available to you. For someone with bitcoin in
a private wallet that's instantly. For someone with bitcoin in an exchange
that's whenever the exchange implements the coin or you withdraw to a private
wallet.

For example bitcoin cash was forked August 1, 2017 but coinbase didn't
implement it until December 19, 2017.

[https://bitcoin.tax/blog/how-to-tax-bitcoin-cash-
bch/](https://bitcoin.tax/blog/how-to-tax-bitcoin-cash-bch/)

~~~
Cyberdog
It illustrates how ludicrous the idea of being taxed for a fork is (along with
taxes on crypto not exchanged for fiat in general). I had never even heard of
most of the forks discussed in this article. Were I a holder of BTC, how am I
supposed to pay taxes on the "wealth" "generated" from forks I didn't even
know existed?

~~~
tehlike
The idea of crypto taxation (besides forks) is same as stocks. Thus, selling
crypto for fiat is same as selling crypto to buy another crypto tax wise.

Taxation in general is not a happy event, but it is consistent in this case.

~~~
raybayfay
Once again - you expect people to somehow magically track the value on 20 hard
forks in 2017, many are scam / not listed on US sites / unclear value, and on
the 50 hard forks in 2018? Not possible - not feasible - and goes counter to
what many EAs and CPAs are advising their clients. People need to stop giving
"couch" advise without considering the consequences.

~~~
tehlike
Best effort. If you went the lengths to "cash it out" because it was free
money, you should pay someone to keep track of it for you, if you don't intend
to.

Wasn't the whole point of bitcoin that it was auditable? IF you know and want
to use a fork for something, you can figure out the exact price fork has
happened.

IF you don't know, you have plausible deniability.

~~~
raybayfay
Responded somewhere else; but to be fair hard forks should be unrealized gain
with 0 cap gains. IF/when someone wants to cash out is when they should pay
the tax. It resolves the bad actor issue with scam coins; meets the need to
pay tax on gains and ultimately saves everyone in bitcoin land (or other
crypto for that matter) from inadvertently not declaring income. It's a win
win for everyone; including the IRS. This is the most common sense approach
and it stuns me that many of the couch / tax advisers are positioning
otherwise.

~~~
tehlike
I agree with this, and i hope this is how hard forks are taxed. It makes sense
to me.

------
magnat
Take care when claiming coins from those forks - even if only for transferring
them to an exchange. Wallet software for those altcoins usually come as an
unsigned, unverifiable binary and ask you to import your existing mainchain
private keys (explicitly or as wallet.dat). Doing so is a best way to lose
your BTC should authors get hold of those keys.

Much safer solution is to craft transaction offline on a separate VM (using
BCCSplitter [1] or altcoin wallet) and then posting raw transaction using
altcoin's blockexplorer or yet another instance of altcoin wallet software
(not containing any private keys).

[1]
[https://github.com/NicolasDorier/BCCSpliter](https://github.com/NicolasDorier/BCCSpliter)

~~~
gondo
or transfer BTC to different wallet before claiming forked coins

~~~
magnat
It depends. If you import whole wallet.dat into altcoin wallet, you share both
present and future (next 100 or so) private keys with the software.

If you transfer your bitcoins to new address provided by existing bitcoin
wallet, chances are the altcoin wallet also has a private key to those
addresses.

To be safe, you'd have to transfer existing bitcoin funds to completely new
wallet. Also, for privacy reasons you would need to make as many transactions
as UTXO you have, which means paying a hefty fee tens or hundreds of time
depending how much you use your wallet.

~~~
tlrobinson
Also note that transactions that consume multiple UTXOs on one chain lead to
privacy leaks on other chains.

------
chaseha
Most of these forks add nothing of value. I don't see forks replacing ICOs at
all, as the article suggests - they serve different purposes (besides the fact
that both may serve as a pure money grab by unscrupulous parties)

~~~
ojr
I saw one exchange charge 0.5 btc to list and support new forks but charge 0.1
btc, if it was an ERC-20 Ethereum token

~~~
tlrobinson
Presumably because it’s less work to support ERC-20 tokens. I don’t think
you’d need to run a separate full node for each token.

~~~
ojr
not only that ERC-20 is a standard, so apis and bots are easy to write on top
of them, ever more reason why forks won't replace ICOs

------
thisisit
How many of the 19 forks have value now? Other than the famous ones - BCH and
Bitcoin Gold - other 17 are not even in the top 100 of coinmarketcap. So the
article and the expert are just inflating their claims.

Additionally, there is no need for forks to create value in coins. Coin
developers also have tried something called "airdrops" where they assign some
coins on a particular criteria. And using bitcoin's blockchain has been one of
the favorite criteria.

~~~
aaron-lebo
While forking as you stated isn't really an issue (if my dog forks Bitcoin,
does it really matter?), but it does suggest that people are willing to do it.
If we drag out further and further into the year and some of the problems with
core Bitcoin aren't resolved, we'll probably see more attempts at forking, and
you only need one to cause some chaos.

Each sizable fork adds confusion, though. It might be obvious to you that
Bitcoin Cash is not Bitcoin, but new adopters not so much. IN some sense the
Bitcoin brand is becoming very diluted.

~~~
thisisit
Again the issue is whether the fork actually gains any credence at all. If
your dog can create a fork which has the same amount of influence behind it as
Bitcoin Cash, then it will gain credence. Otherwise it doesn't matter if there
is a fork.

That said, surely we will see more forks. The Segwit2x was called off but it
will be back with additional force. We might see additional 1-2 more forks
with credence and re-using the name "Bitcoin" but 50? is just making up
numbers.

------
cs702
Anyone possessing the private keys to a Bitcoin balance in the blockchain
before each fork automatically owns an equal balance in each forked
blockchain.

~~~
invalidusernam3
Which in most cases doesn't really matter since the forked value is pretty
much zero (except for the occasional rare ones like BCH)

~~~
kakarot
BCH retained value because it represented a large portion of the community,
and the goal was a soft fork rather than a hard fork so quite a few people
participated in the switch.

That kind of thing will happen less and less each time a large, informed group
of people leave BTC, till all you are left with is a fool's market.

~~~
makomk
It also helped that the portion of the community BCH represented included the
owner of bitcoin.com and a few of the other major sites and services. (Also
one of the major mining hardware providers, though I'm not sure how well that
worked out - they forced miners to use it for hardware purchases at a time
when it was borderline-unusable, which can't have left a good impression.)

------
Nursie
This seems bad.

I understand the idealogical reasons for, say, Bitcoin Cash arising as an
attempt to bring transaction times and fees crashing down while increasing
network capacity to the existing 'currency'. But when it cpmes to creating new
currencoes on general, forking the existing blockchain just seems let yet more
reward for existing holders, and further disincentive for the new coin to
actually be used for anything.

I mean hell, here's another way for your rapidly inflating asset to maybe gain
another 10% overnight! Why on earth would you ever spend any of it?

------
alex_duf
Is there a list somewhere of all the bitcoin forks? The wikipedia one doesn't
seem to be up to date...

~~~
akerro
I use this list [https://btcdiv.com/](https://btcdiv.com/)

------
aminorex
That being the case, then the present value of Bitcoin is much higher than it
would be with no expectation of future forks. It is like holding shares in a
company which spins-off a division to increase shareholder value.

------
45h34jh53k4j
Its cool -- the only coins that will survive 2018 will be the ones with
segwit, and thus, lightning network support.

Instant, near zero cost bitcoin lightning transactions on the bitcoin network
makes all other coins look lame.

This is not science fiction, it is here today. $2 segwit tx to fund the
channel, as many tx's for 1 satoshi after that until I exhaust the channel.

------
bsbechtel
Stocks do the same thing, and after the split, the stock's price is determined
by the market based on how much the new shares diluted the market. Seems like
something very similar will happen here, with the difference being each fork
will have a differing value determined by the market's exchange rate between
forks?

Edit: I think many are missing the point that a fork and the original BTC
blockchain are not of equal value. Maybe a more apt analogy would have been
countries in the EU leaving and issuing their own currency.

~~~
wz1000
Bitcoins are _not_ stocks. Stocks represent claims on actual stuff. Bitcoins
represent... nothing.

~~~
45h34jh53k4j
Except the energy that has been burned in the last 9 years used to create
them. The security comes from the need to spend as much energy to 'undo' them.

Where do alts (esp non POW alts) get their value? Because people want to trade
them to get more bitcoin, which has value as per above.

You can keep repeating this circa 2014 argument 'not backed blah blah', but as
yet it has not gone to 0, and likely never will.

