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Comment by wfunction | Hacker News Reader

Thanks! Isn't this something a currency should fundamentally prevent? I don't know of any real-world currency that can be used twice.

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It's more like if someone created a new currency and gave each owner of an existing currency (say, the dollar) an equivalent nominal amount of the new notes.

Bitcoin Cash is a separate project and currency from Bitcoin. You can't pay someone who is expecting Bitcoin by sending Bitcoin Cash to them or vice-versa.

Bitcoin's code is open source and the balances of all addresses are public, so anyone could create a fork (a new separate currency based on it, optionally starting with the same balances).

Right, but presumably a reasonably large merchant would find that they need to accept both though, right? And now you would have more purchasing power with them which feels a bit weird, since the old Bitcoin and the new Bitcoin would not have the same purchasing power...

Maybe, maybe not. Bitcoin might have been 200$ higher without the fork.

Merchants find they need to accept any popular currency their users demand. Being forked from the Bitcoin chain is beside the point.

if merchants accept bitcoin cash, logic dictates that they must increase their price to match the new supply of money created by this fork, so that the total amount of purchasing power that any particular individual has pre-fork and post-fork remains the same.

I'm unaware of any merchant accepting alt coin that isn't immediately converting to fiat. The btc price you see is always pegged to the price at the exchange.

Right now, the exchanges have only just allowed Bitcoin Cash deposits. I'm not aware of any merchant that accepts Bitcoin Cash. I believe that because of the massive price difference (purchasing power) between Bitcoin and Bitcoin Cash, merchants would have to accept them just like merchants accept different currencies in Hong Kong (RMB, HKD, USD).

You can just convert your BCH to BTC.

True! But that alone usually isn't enough for merchants to want to accept a cryptocurrency. (e.g. very few merchants accept ETH or LTC).

Sure. But my point is that there's no need for merchants to support BCH. Or to keep supporting BTC. As long as it's easy to exchange one for the other. As it is with ShapeShift.

Merchants don't need to accept Bitcoin Cash any more than they need to accept any other altcoin (e.x. Litecoin)

>but presumably a reasonably large merchant would find that they need to accept both though, right?

Bitcoin Cash isn't the first new or even nearly the most popular altcoin. Ethereum has actually overtaken Bitcoin in some indicators at times, though not in number of accepting merchants. Nothing has gotten close to Bitcoin in terms of how many places accept it.

The closest thing I can think of is the old Australian "holey dollar" and the "dump", which was punched out from it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holey_dollar#British_colony_of...

There are some vaguely similar things if you think of Bitcoin as something more like store or credit card points or frequent flyer miles.

Sometimes those points give you the rights to some other associated company points without spending the original points.

Also worth noting is that sometimes these points are effectively unspendable because of availability of rewards etc. Just like how Bitcoin Cash is "worth" $700 (or whatever), but you can't actually exchange it for anything at that price.

Imagine tracking your bank balance in git, and then you branch off.

Now you have two balances - two diverging branches with shared history. You can't spend either twice, that is, create two commits with the same parent that don't diverge again.

It's not being used twice though on any individual fork. Plus the value would have to split for any fork.

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