Bitcoin May Split Many Times in 2018
I think this article is making a serious mistake in confusing different kinds of forks.<p>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.<p>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).<p>This article leads with &quot;Some 19 Bitcoin forks came out last year -- but up to 50 more could happen this year&quot; and then completely conflates the two by talking about Litecoin et. al. and Bitcoin Cash interchangeably.<p>To my knowledge, Bitcoin Cash is the only &#x27;true&#x27; fork that survived beyond the splitting of the BTC chain, but please correct me if I&#x27;m wrong on that.<p>It would be scaremongering if I thought it was intentional.