August 1st , this day for Bitcoin and Altcoin investors and traders spells uncertainty , anxiety and panic. On the other hand some investors and analysts are pragmatic and optimistic about this upcoming hard fork and are hopefully that it will advantageous. Vinny Lingham, CEO and Co-founder of civic.com, a cryptocurrency banking and trading platform, had this to say about the up coming hard fork.
I’ve been very surprised with the amount of vocal support for a Bitcoin Hard Fork —especially from many Bitcoin supporters who believe it is either inevitable or “not a bad thing”. I get it, but you’re wrong. I know everyone is tired of the scaling debate. I’m not going to go into the technical details around this debate but instead, I’m going to focus this post on debunking the non-technical arguments for a Hard Fork and highlighting the ensuing confusion and market impact that a contentious Bitcoin Hard Fork will have, if we indeed have a split between Bitcoin Core and Bitcoin Unlimited.
Exchanges today have just confirmed they will be listing BTU as an altcoin if there is a Hard Fork — this scares me because although the industry person knows what an altcoin is — the average person outside the industry doesn’t. This was the catalyst for my post today. I have predicted that Bitcoin should hit $3,000 by end of this year — but not if there is a contentious Hard Fork.
Keep in mind that I hope that this changes the mindset around support for a contentious Hard Fork, which creates another Bitcoin, because I believe this needs to be avoided at all costs. In fact, if any of the scenarios below begin to play out, we’re already in trouble… If you agree with the logic below, let’s convince miners and the community to not consider even doing a Bitcoin Unlimited Hard Fork.Also, even after the big bug in Bitcoin Unlimited yesterday, more nodes are back up and running signalling it. I know many people don’t believe it will happen and they may be right, but we cannot ignore a persistent and growing threat to the ecosystem and so I’m speaking out about it now.
It’s inarguable that Bitcoin is the single strongest brand in the crypto space. I believe it probably received $2–5bn in free media exposure over the years. A Hard Fork would create 2 brands of Bitcoin — essentially handing over some brand value to Bitcoin Unlimited. I wrote a post about Bitcoin’s power and network effect over 2 years ago — it’s worth reading if you haven’t. The moment there is a hard fork, we are going to allow brand confusion to step in. This is a HORRIBLE idea.
The security of the Bitcoin network comes from the computational hash power that the miners bring. This is driven by the price of Bitcoin — higher the price, more hashing power. High prices are in turn driven by market demand. Market demand is driven by PR & media and the long term narrative that Bitcoin is the first and only true cryptocurrency which is a long term store of value. If we mess with this, I believe we can expect negative consequences. When the media declared Bitcoin was dead in 2014, it took us a long time to recover, price wise.
Whats your take on this? Comment and upvote… more predictions from analysts to come.
