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How is bitcoin supply finite, if it can hard fork?

Like saying how is gold supply finite if you can break a piece of gold in half. When Bitcoin forks the value is split between the two forks. If the market cap of Bitcoin before the fork is $10 Billion, the combined market cap of both sides of the fork afterwards will still be $10 Billion. There are double the number of coins because of the fork but now each person who had one coin has two and each coin is worth a fraction of what is was before. It's an increase in supply but an increase that is perfectly distributed among the previous holders.

The split value is in theory but didn't seem to follow in practice. Anyone can create a fork, and the market will not be that efficient, even in the long run. I don't think the metaphor works for that reason.

Simply, forking makes a coin that is not Bitcoin, and people can value it however they like. The only question is why they would value it at all. There are usually technical differences in forks that people believe are better.

A better analogy in my mind is that Bitcoin can be gold coin, and a fork is someone making cardboard coin, coloring them gold, and then calling it a type of bitcoin.

Forks are completely separate from bitcoin and are worth nowhere near as much.

Forks aren't Bitcoin

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