Author: Gavin Andresen 2015-09-29 14:04:39
Published on: 2015-09-29T14:04:39+00:00
The discussion revolves around the possibility of continuing to use the old version of Bitcoin in case of a hard fork. The idea is that anyone who is ideologically opposed to the change can keep using the old version as long as there are enough miners to support it. However, the feasibility of this idea is questioned in the context of a scenario where 5% of miners refuse to go along with the 95% majority. In this scenario, an exchange could decide to support the 5% and allow people to trade coins from that fork. Anyone with pre-fork Bitcoin, which is valid on both sides of the fork, could potentially take advantage of this situation. They could create a send-to-self transaction on the 95% fork that is only valid on that fork and then transfer those same coins to the 5% exchange and sell them for whatever price they can get. This would result in a massive price drop for coins on the 5% fork. The question remains whether anyone would stick to the 5% fork in the face of enormously long transaction confirmation times and a huge transaction backlog.
Updated on: 2023-06-10T23:27:10.146883+00:00