If Bitcoin HardFork Occurs -- Explained

in bitcoin •  8 years ago  (edited)

Hi everyone, this is a quick and dirty explanation in lamens terms for what would happen if you have bitcoin, and the bitcoin chain hard forks in the near future.

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What will happen on most exchanges, including Poloniex, BitFinex, and many others (but perhaps not on LocalBitcoins and sites like that), is this:

When/If a hard-fork occurs, Bitcoin will remain, and a new derivative of the Bitcoin network will come into existence as well. Almost all major exchanges say they will not remove Bitcoin (BTC) from their markets, but it will exist as it is and a new "coin", Bitcoin Unlimited (BTU) would be added. All people holding bitcoin, will then have the exact same amount of Bitcoin and a mirrored amount of BTU will be created from the new network.

This means if you have 10 Bitcoins today, and a hard fork occurs, you will also be holding 10BTU as of the point of the hard fork. This is likely why Bitcoin price is moving up still, because people would like to get their share of any BTU that is generated during the hardfork for themselves.

If you have any questions, ask :)

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Is this what happened with the Ethereum fork back in the day? ETH holders received classic ethereum equivalent to their ETH holdings?

In the same way that Ethereum Classic has a lower market-cap, it is highly likely that BTU will not surpass BTC

Yes this is exactly why everyone who held ETH during the hard fork received equivalent ETC

According to coinmarketcap, 1BTU = $118.75 (0.10093500 BTC), so does this mean that if I have 1 BTC for instance, and a hard fork occurs, will I have 1 BTC which is $1525.12 + $118.75? Or will the value of BTC be halved because of the Hard Fork?

I was not aware BTU was already a coin, so I am not sure if the current BTU is the same as what would exist in the hard fork.

Well, according to some articles that I've been going through, people had begun to mine it

So does this mean if I keep my bitcoin offline I would still have both coins? The hard fork would keep both ledgers, so all current owners would get both right?

I believe you would just need to get a BTU wallet, import your BTC private key, and you will have an account with a mirror amount at the time of the fork in that wallet.

What happens to paper wallet Bitcoin.?

Answered in Logicwins question, but -- I believe you would just need to get a BTU wallet, import your BTC private key, and you will have an account with a mirror amount at the time of the fork in that wallet.